


A Slave's Care

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, Complicated Relationships, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, M/M, Slavery, some violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-07 10:48:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4260432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Additional Warning.</p><p>THIS AU IS DARK. I repeat, it's a very dark variation, with dark versions of the characters and of society.</p><p>I have NO frippin' idea where this came from. None. It's way outside my norms in any way or sense. I don't know if I'm going beyond one chapter--this one chapter resolves well enough as a single story, ending with a dramatic point and conclusion based on the characters. But it could also go a lot further. </p><p>It is at least partly triggered by other peoples' Alternate Universes with legal slavery. It's triggered by my own curiosity what might tempt a recognizable Lestrade into elements of Dark!Lestrade type behaviors given a legal-slavery cultural assumption and recognizable Mycroft and Sherlock.</p><p>Nothing terribly kinky or explicit happens in the first chapter, but there are ways in which the core element of all slavery--all the truth that life itself is dub con for a slave--hovers over it all. That's what slavery is, in the end--the insistence that an owner need not in any way care about a slave's "consent." To anything. And that is at the core of Lestrade's motives, as well. After all, he's lived on the ugly side of Mycroft's axiom, that "caring is not an advantage."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Oi, Boss—wossup?”

Lestrade looked up, attention dragged from the auction advert in morning paper he’d been reading. “Sorry, Sal. Just keeping up wi’ the news. Probs?”

“No probs. Just thought I’d tell you I’m taking the team to recheck the site of the Varst break-in. Anything you want me to do while I’m there?”

Lestrade frowned, forcing himself to pay attention when his entire conscious self wanted to throw work over as a bad idea, at least for now. “Yeah. Tell Mrs. Varst to make an appointment to come in tomorrow for a formal interview with me. Morning, not afternoon. I think I’m taking tomorrow afternoon off.”

Sally struggled between opposing curiosities. She attended to the “appropriate” one, first. “Y’ think she did it, guv?”

“No. I think she knows something that will tell me who did, it, though.”

“So she’s covering for the perp?”

“No—just doesn’t know what her information really means.” Lestrade smiled, a good-natured, but non-informative smile.

“And—tomorrow afternoon?” Sally risked a guess. “Doctor appointment? Or something?”

“Or something,” Lestrade said, making a face as though it was going to be an unwelcome few hours.

He was determined not to give himself away.

It was a struggle to make it through the day, though, and through the next morning. He managed to place calls to his bank and to various associates without being noticed, though, and by noon the next day he had his ducks in line—or hoped so. He slipped on his overcoat, dropped by a nearby solicitor’s office to pick up a set of paperwork, and hurried over to the auction rooms at Whitehall. Once there he presented the paperwork from the solicitor to the admissions officer, along with his own personal ID—citizen’s card and warrant card. He drew a breath, trying to calm himself, and was embarrassed when the admissions officer smiled understandingly.

“First time, sir?”

He gave a crooked grin. “Only time.”

“It’s not so hard as you’d think,” the admissions officer said. “The truth is there’s not a lot of competition for what we have on offer. It usually breaks down into two classifications. A few are outright crooks, caught embezzling Her Majesty’s Government. The rest are middle-aged civil servants too entrenched to be easily dealt with when someone higher up wants to clear the decks or turn over a new leaf. Not a lot of call for balding, pot-bellied government bean counters.”

“Just shows most people have no imagination,” Lestrade said, forcing humor to cover insecurity. “Government-trained tax accountant who has to make you tea and fold your laundry? It’s a deal, yeah?”

The other man laughed, though a bit skeptically. “Slave’s a lot of trouble, you ask me,” he said.

Neither he nor Lestrade said the obvious—that most people couldn’t afford the cost of a slave—to buy, license, or maintain.

Lestrade signed the sheet the admissions officer shoved toward him, put away his ID and his papers, and followed the bleak signage to the main auction room. He found a chair midway to the back, and sat down, glancing around. He was early, but he still found it promising that the room wasn’t crammed.

There had been times over the years he’d damned the fact that Mycroft Holmes kept a low profile. Times over the years his life would have been easier and safer by far if more people had understood what an understatement it was when Mycroft claimed to hold a minor position in government. Today, though, it suggested he’d be bidding against fewer competitors—and lower ranking ones, at that.

It was still unsure. Mycroft Holmes had made enemies. The very fact he was on the docket for the day’s sales suggested as much. Someone, somewhere, wanted rid of him. The question was whether, having got him out of office, then then wanted him in a dungeon of some sort—their own dungeon.

Lestrade’s eyes narrowed, and he checked the figures in the funds available to him. He could be outbid, he thought—but years of planning and hours of calling in old debts and favors meant he’d not be outbid by the common rabble, at least.

His optimism was still high when the hour approached. There were only ten bidders assembled, and though Lestrade wasn’t stupid enough to think the majority were private bidders, it was still a very small pool. He studied the faces of his opposition, trying to work out which were buyers for the various slave agencies—and to deduce from there which would have done their homework and which would merely be there for a regular event hoping to pick off a few literate, numerate slaves to sell to less skilled middle and lower-class entrepreneurs. He saw one woman whose overall comportment led him to suspect she knew something special was coming up for bid, but the rest looked apathetic and uninterested. Among the private buyers, he was less sure. One, he thought, might even be a private auctioning agent there to represent a civilian bidder.

He wished he could have afforded one of those, he thought, uneasily. If the bidding became tense, he wasn’t sure he’d have the speed, skill, and finesse to manage on his own. But he’d scraped the bottom of his resources to compile the money he held, and he still wasn’t sure he’d have enough if the purchase and auction agents were on their toes.

The various staff who ran the action were stirring, by then: checking the lobby for any last-minute stragglers, scanning the present group, darting into the wings of the auction stage. Then the house lights flicked, steadied—and the auctioneer came out: a trim woman in a neat suit, her dark hair slicked into a professional chignon at the back of her neck. She evaluated the buyers in the house.

“Good afternoon. As you know, we’re here today to auction off this quarter’s penalty-slaves,” she said, calmly. “I see some familiar faces here. Good…good. Bennefield, I would recommend you take a good look at item 6: she’s younger than most our selection, and should clean up nicely. Your employers could get more use out of her than just secretarial and accounting, if you get my drift. Lady S, it’s good to see you here, though I’m afraid you’ll find little of interest this month. Small fry, for the most part, this quarter—not likely to prove any use for shadow services, unless you’re looking for canon fodder. Jamie, me-lad, I suspect it’s going to be a good haul for you. Plenty of serviceable clerks at a fair price. Your business could do worse.”

As she talked, greeting familiar faces, the auction workers bustled on stage, putting down a simple circular display dais in mid-stage. It was low-tech, low drama. Lestrade knew what it was like in the big, popular auction houses: display stands with chains and eye-bolts and hooks, fancy lighting, turning platforms, all intended to show off the strongest, the prettiest, the most sexually alluring, the most violent slaves. He’d busted a few auctions of that type. The difference was beyond belief. He remembered giving the word to start the raid once when there had been two strong-men up for bid—black and white, both sleek, cut, and oiled, every muscle shining under blue and red lights, the shackles and display machinery forcing them into revealing, dramatic postures as the display podium turned under the central spot light. After, he’d seen Sally casually pat their bums—one after the other, with good natured appreciation—as she chatted with another officer in the aftermath. She’d never even looked into their eyes.

Lestrade, though, had seen their expressions: sick, uneasy, embarrassed, unsure what came next or where they’d be at end of day.

As it happened, they’d been dead—put down as too expensive to maintain and too valuable as evidence to set free on their own recognizance. The DCI had grumbled as he gave the order, snarling that the police were too strapped to pay for bully-boys and fuck-toys to eat their heads off while awaiting trial.

The auctioneer rapped her gavel, then, and officially opened the auction.

The assortment was as she’d suggested, Lestrade thought. A few younger clerks who’d polish up well. Mostly older men and women, eyes dull and body language hopeless and pessimistic as the auction staff led them up one at a time to stand on the dais. They were all dressed in government prison garb—the old broad arrow still used to identify slaves from true criminals. They wore ugly, unappealing pull-on elasticized canvas boat shoes, and black mass-produced socks.

Bidding was quiet, efficient, and desultory. The man identified at the start as Jamie was purchasing the majority, for rock-bottom prices. At the rate they were going for, even little mom-pop shops and Paki corner restaurants might be able to afford to buy in some office staff: the slaves undercut the cost of even illegal-immigrant family members, even factoring in licensing costs. Lady S. bid for a wild-eyed, nervous little Irishman, but let him go when the cost rose above five-hundred quid. Lestrade wasn’t surprised to see the young man go instead to the man called Bennefield, who’d also snapped up the highly recommended young woman who’d been sixth to the stand.

Lestrade checked his program and the little clipping he’d cut out of the prior day's newspaper, frowning and trying not to worry that somehow he’d got something wrong. It was always a bit of a trick, reading through the ambiguities of slave-sale postings. Names were taken from slaves the moment the government ruled them slaves, and government auctions worked to maintain anonymity in ways civilian auctions might not. Many slaves on government auction were of good family and education, and the government tried to avoid the embarrassment to friends and family that might be felt when people were reclassified for the convenience of the administrative overview.

But, still—he thought he was right. The flags he’d noticed were right. Balliol College, Oxford: firsts in History, Languages, and Maths. Long service under both Labor and Tory governments. Recently of the traffic department….

It was a relief, though, when at last the staff led on Item 21, and Lestrade knew he’d guessed right.

Mycroft Holmes…

The tall man walked in behind the staff members, looking oddly fragile and out of place in the baggy broad-arrow suit. It had been made for someone both shorter and fatter than Holmes, and hung on him in sloppy sags while still leaving his ankles and wrists far too exposed. His hair had been cropped, and he looked balder than usual. He avoided meeting anyone’s eyes, though there were several besides Lestrade studying him intensely. The auctioneer frowned, something unhappy flickering in her eyes, before she raised her chin and began her schpiel. Lady Smallwood, too, watched the man with narrowed eyes.

Lestrade held his breath and forced himself to sit still, unmoving, not bidding. Let someone else open it. Let the other bidders establish the speed and intensity of the trade.

The opening bid was for a humiliatingly low fifty quid—a bid from one of the job-lot slave agencies. The auctioneer rightfully scoffed, pointing out that at that rate a beggar could buy a Balliol man to carry his begging cap for him and still come out ahead at the end of a business day. The man Jamie nodded and brought it up to one hundred. Lady Smallwood grimaced, but inserted her own bid, bringing it to a hundred fifty.

So far Holmes was going for a scandalously low price, Lestrade thought, heart pounding as he considered the possibility he could have afforded this auction without the years of planning, saving, and downright blackmail he’d marshalled to his goal. He’d been so sure the man would have both allies and enemies forcing the bidding price up—the same sorts of connection that had led Lestrade to expect that someday, somehow, Mycroft Holmes would end up on the block. You didn’t play the kind of game Holmes played without collecting baggage of all sorts, and baggage attracted attention. Only the most overtly powerful could brush aside that sort of unwanted concern, and Holmes had refused to be overt.

As a result he didn’t have the kind of protection a more public façade might have provided.

On the other hand, he’d had a longer, more successful run at covert power than was common.

Lestrade almost missed the shift, when Lady Smallwood, in response to a bid from one of the job-lot agencies, jumped from two hundred fifty to five thousand in one move. All the room seemed to draw a deep breath. Lestrade glanced around, evaluating faces. The sleek auctioneer—he’d seen her before somewhere, he thought, as she acknowledged the bid and studied the man on the dais. She was still, giving away nothing, but Lady Smallwood’s move had triggered something.

Holmes himself moved from passive humility to alert attention. Lestrade wasn’t sure what he thought—he’d never known what Mycroft Holmes thought in all the years they’d worked together on and off—but he did know Holmes was weighing the fact of Lady Smallwood’s bid.

The slave glanced at the slave auctioneer, and Lestrade could have sworn something passed between the two. The sleek woman drew a breath, and kept her call running, “Five, five, going once, going twice, five and five, once, twice…”

Lestrade raised a finger just before five-hundred and fifty thousand would have taken it.

“Five-six to Scotland Yard; who’ll give me six? Six, anyone? Six? He’s a solid clerk with a good record, people—a treasure for anyone with serious office work to keep in hand. Six from Lady Smallwood, and, yes, six-five from you, Jamie…”

Lestrade raised his finger again, then settled back as the bid was passed rapidly around again. Jamie was a job-lotter, but of a type that suggested he dealt with more expensive stock than just utility slaves. Lady Smallwood? Private buyer, but her motives were anyone’s guess. Given her place in government she could be one of the enemies or allies Lestrade had expected. The private buying agent put in a bid, just then, though one of the other job-lot agents was on a mobile phone, apparently debating continuing with the bids with a partner somewhere off site.

Lestrade didn’t know whether to be hopeful or terrified. So far the cost was still well within the range he’d assigned himself. Almost suspiciously low…as though someone had wanted to ensure there was a chance Holmes would go to someone ordinary and unremarkable.

It could happen. It depended on what the goals of those hidden allies and enemies looked like. If they wanted Holmes for their own uses and purposes, the low starting bid would soon be eaten up in rising offers. If they just wanted him gone, and ideally buried in the amorphous, anonymous throng of London’s civilian population, one lowly slave owned by an equally lowly entrepreneur or private citizen, well—

In spite of the flicker of hope, Lestrade checked his funds again. He could go higher. Much higher, if he had to.

He raised a finger, bidding in at seven thousand.

Mycroft Holmes looked out blankly over the bidding audience, his face still and without meaning or message. His posture was neither proud nor humble, but merely there.

Lestrade, though, thought he detected a faint tremor in the man’s hands, as though the price of his auction was being paid in nerve and courage on his part, just as it would be paid in pounds and pence by his bidders.

Good. He deserves it, damn him….

Lestrade scowled, realizing in a flash how much anger had to do with his years of planning for this event.

“Eight-five from Lady Smallwood…once, twice…nine from Critendon…nine-five from Scotland Yard….”

How did the auctioneer know he was from Scotland Yard, Lestrade wondered, then cursed himself for an idiot. Of course she knew who was bidding. No one had come in without passing that admitting officer, showing ID of one sort or another. No such thing as true anonymity in a government auction: not for the buyers or the slaves.

“Ten from Lady Smallwood. Ten…ten…he’s a deal at the price, people. Is anyone bidding higher? Ten-five, Scotland Yard. Eleven, Lady S. Eleven-five, Critendon…”

Lady Smallwood turned and looked across the room. She was, Lestrade thought, too posh for this setting—too elegant and poised. Her hair was a golden and silver meringue chiffon, piled high. Her blue eyes were bright and alert. She studied Lestrade.

He studied her right back, eyes narrowing, unsure if she was trying to deduce him the way Sherlock often had, or bully him into silence, or what.

One hand rose, almost touching her ear, and her expression changed. Her chin dropped a fraction of a degree, and her attention was suddenly not in the room at all.

Outside advisor, Lestrade thought, Head set. He wondered if she was further wired—if this were some sort of MI5 sting. She looked at him again, then, and away.

“Twelve, twelve from you Jamie. Twelve-five, Critendon. Thirteen, Scotland Yard. Lady S, do I hear thirteen-five? No? Your loss. Thirteen going once, going twice…thirteen-five from Critendon. Fourteen, Jamie. Fourteen-five, Critendon. Fifteen, Scotland Yard….”

In the end Lestrade won the bidding at eighteen thousand five hundred and fifty. It was, in his world, a small fortune—enough to purchase a luxury car or a top-line computing system…and unlike those, a slave had to be purchased in full, rather than on credit. No one he knew spent that kind of money on a slave. Of course, most of the people he knew never bought slaves. Businessmen, even small-time businessmen, bought slaves, because they were cheap and lacked the kinds of protections employees were granted by Her Majesty’s government. Your average wage-slave, though, made enough to protect his or her own freedom from anything but criminal or eminent domain seizure, but not enough to purchase those who’d been less lucky, and who had lost their liberty.

Lestrade went forward at the end of the auction, and introduced himself to the auctioneer, handing over his cash card without comment. She showed him the sales slip, pointed out costs in addition to the purchase price—the “house” took fifteen-percent in service fees, among other things, and the license was factored in before the sale could be considered complete.

“Have I seen you before?” he asked, uncertainly, as he signed the chit.

She smiled, tightly. “I don’t think so.” Her voice suggested she suspected he was hitting on her.

“You’re sure?” he asked. “I meet a lot of people in my work.”

“And now you’ve met me,” she countered, “But I assure you, I’d recall if I’d met you before.”

He nodded, then, for manners if not out of conviction. “What next?” he asked.

“You go around to the pound with the receipt and they hand him over,” she said, casually. “After that he’s your problem.”

Lestrade felt a shiver run through him at the thought. He folded the receipt carefully, put away his wallet, and proceeded from the room, out the hall to the entrance lobby, out the lobby and through the vast entry doors. Then down the stairs, around the way and to the back alley that ran down the center of the block. There it was all inset little car parks, diesel lorrys farting smog into the dank air, chain fencing, and the accordion-pleat steel of rolling doors closing off the various offices and receiving bays in the downtown buildings. He found the official loading bay that served as Whitehall’s slave pound. He trotted up the concrete stairs, hand light on the pipe-work railing. He stepped in. It was more or less what he’d expected: worn, WWII era furniture, battered and worn wood flooring showing scraps of old paint between wide swaths of splintered, battered pine. He located the transaction desk, and wandered over, pulling out his receipt.

“Item 21, today’s auction,” he said.

The clerk grunted. “Good enough,” he said, studying the paper. “Wrapped or unwrapped.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You pay extra to take ‘em away with the broad arrow,” the clerk said. “Her Majesty ain’t no charity.”

“What will he wear if I don’t buy the broad arrow?”

The clerk shrugged. “Your choice, ennit? Not like they’ll arrest him for indecent if you take ‘im starkers, after all. Slaves don’t count.”

Lestrade shivered again, and pulled his light jacket a bit closer around himself. He glanced out the open loading bay door into the alley beyond. It was warm summer weather, he thought. He wouldn’t have to damn himself for a complete bastard if he made Holmes go home naked.

The beat of his pulse denied that logic—but he’d been having an argument with his pulse for years now, when it came to this plan, this moment. He licked his lips. “Unwrapped,” he said.

The clerk barely bothered to grunt. Instead he shouted down the echoing bay to another worker. “Bring in today’s 21, yeah? Save the wrapping paper.” He looked Lestrade up and down. “He your first, or are you buying him for your company?”

“My first,” Lestrade said, and felt the same sort of thrill he’d felt the first time he’d bought a pint; played a game of pool for real wager; fucked a woman; purchased his own car.

The clerk nodded. “They say there’s nothing like it,” he said, grinning a bit. “Not that I’d know. Got all I can do to meet the bills and send the kids to school, me. But good on you, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Lestrade said. He had suspected that at some point he’d feel changed by owning Holmes. He hadn’t expected that change to start the moment he was transformed into a slave owner in the eyes of a London clerk with a thick estuary accent wearing a grubby work uniform not that different from a mechanic’s or a delivery man’s. It was true, though: the man looked at him in a way that made him feel bigger, stronger, tougher, more important.

He owned a slave. He owned Mycroft Holmes. He’d been planning to own Mycroft Holmes since the first night it had occurred to him that someday, somehow, Mycroft was going to mess up, and end up on the block.

He remembered that first moment. He’d been tired, sore, injured. He’d spent the day being verbally and professionally abused and humiliated by Mycroft’s younger brother, Sherlock. He’d done his best to keep the younger man safe, only to get less than no thanks from either Holmes Major or Holmes Minor, in their bloody posh, public-school, Oxford educated superiority. Mycroft had sent him on his way with a critique, rather than a thank you, and Lestrade had spent the night wondering how employment by Scotland Yard and association with MI5 warranted him being turned into a babysitter for an overgrown, attitudinal brat, without so much as an offer of overtime or danger pay. They were both tactless, clueless, impossible bastards, he’d thought. Sherlock was going to end up jailed or auctioned just on the grounds he couldn’t follow the rules to save his life—and while the older brother was going to take longer to be gaveled into shackles, his manners made it obvious someday he would be on the losing end of a departmental coup…and come the day, DI Gregory Lestrade wanted to be in the auction house with a wallet full of ready and a plan for his future.

He’d opened his eyes in the dark, then, imagining it, his heart suddenly drumming like a woodpecker pounding a hollow tree. Someday, if he planned for it, he could own Mycroft Bloody Holmes.

Now he did.

He licked his lips, and glanced across the loading bay. On the far side a boy probably not much past eighteen sauntered out, leading the pale, naked form of Holmes. Holmes was wearing a collar with tags, and he had to struggle to match the erratic, uneven ambling path the boy led him as he jerked impatiently at the older man’s twisted steel-cable leash.

Lestrade gulped, shuddered, and shoved the intensity of his reaction inside fast and hard, out of sight. He hoped it was as out of sight from Holmes as it would be from the ordinary run. Or perhaps he didn’t, he thought—perhaps he wanted the man to still have that clever, alert, deductive ability. Perhaps he wanted Mycroft Holmes to know how much Lestrade looked forward to owning him.

Their eyes met as the boy approached the coarse, outdated lino-and-aluminum trimmed desk. Holmes’ chin rose, then, and his face became still.

Lestrade risked a tight, hard smile, then turned back to the clerk. In moments he had all the remaining paperwork in hand, and clutched the leash. He glanced at Holmes. “This way, then,” he said, and turned, walking quickly out of the loading bay, never looking back.

He could feel Mycroft on the other end of the leash, he thought, unsettled by the slight tugs, and moments of slack that told him the other man was struggling to match his pace and navigate the stairs of the loading platform. He cast his mind ahead, thinking through the route to his car. He’d have to go back to the front of the building, then walk his new possession three more blocks to the public car park.

He fought down a sudden smile. Three blocks…

It was a little revenge, he thought. Petty. Mean. But, then, he’d suffered years of Mycroft and Sherlock’s arrogant pettiness. Their calm assumption of superiority. Being walked three blocks as a naked slave seemed like the merest start on repayment of dignity dented and personal self-worth challenged. If Mycroft had never been as cruel or caustic as Sherlock could be, he’d also never managed to win Lestrade’s grudging sense that he couldn’t help himself. Over time Lestrade had concluded Sherlock was simply a helpless prat—abrasive, rude, with a motor-mouth and some sort of neurological screw-up that made him unable to realize he had not personally hung the moon and stars and set the planets in motion. He’d even come to like Sherlock—love him, a little—in the years they’d worked together. The older brother was a harder call. He warranted more sympathy, in some ways. He had to look after Sherlock, after all. But then…

But then he turned and used Lestrade like a dog to accomplish that goal. Years of eyes never meeting. Years of languid dismissals. Years spent with no thanks, no apologies, no nothing.

So Lestrade strode down the pavement of Whitehall, in the heart of Mycroft Holmes’ former turf, dragging the younger man behind him, never looking back, in part so the younger man would not see the fierce, victorious grin growing on Lestrade’s face. Ahead Lestrade could see the men and women in their neat, expensive suits, with their silk scarves and pocket squares, their bespoke hand-made shoes, their briefcases worth more than Lestrade made in a month…

Ahead he could see people look, recognize, and understand. The range of reactions alone was worth the nigh-on twenty-thousand pounds Lestrade had paid out that day, by the time he’d covered everything. People who knew Mycroft. People who only thought he looked familiar. But face after face looking and knowing that one of their own had fallen… Some looked away, embarrassed or afraid of a similar fate. Some stared in fascination, gawping. Only pride and determination kept Lestrade from gawping back, turning around to watch as they passed Holmes. Did they meet his eye, Lestrade wondered. Did they gloat, making his new slave aware of their delight in his downfall? Did they look away, ashamed?

Did he look away? Stare at his toes? Keep his eyes locked to the back of his new owner, racing ahead of him down the busy downtown streets? Was he trying to cover his dangling, flapping genitals?

For the first time it occurred to Lestrade that he, not Mycroft, now had the advantage—of ownership, yes. But even of Mycroft’s old tools. Lestrade smiled to himself, already planning the act of checking the CCTV cameras, copying the video for himself if he found Mycroft’s humiliation sufficiently satisfying. Maybe making his slave watch it with him as he critiqued his behavior and demeanor—a humiliation Mycroft had inflicted on Lestrade more than once without thinking or hesitating in any way.

“You lost focus,” he’d scolded more than once. “Look—right there—lost focus. You can’t do that with Sherlock, Lestrade. You have to be on your toes. Pay attention. And there—look. You let him trick you into laughing, and you lost the upper hand.”

Of course it was true. He’d never had the skills or fierce determination to properly keep Sherlock under his control. But, then, he’d never wanted that job, either. Working with the berk was fun, and even rewarding. But no one had actually ever asked him if he wanted to be bear-keeper to a genius bear. Certainly no one had ever asked him if he’d wanted to be scolded like an erring school child—or an erring slave—by the bear’s bad-tempered brother.

On reaching his car, Lestrade beeped the car open with his remote, put down the car-blanket on the back seat without looking, and snapped over his shoulder, “In.” He was already opening the front driver’s door as Holmes slipped silently into the back seat. Only when he’d got the door open and stable did he pause and turn back. He met Holmes’ eyes, face expressionless.

“Are you going to behave, or do I have to lock your lead to the hand-grip?” he asked.

Holmes stared back. His face was still, his body—in all its pink and white, freckled vulnerability—still straight and calm. He took a slow, deep breath, and said, “Either. I’m not planning anything, though.”

Lestrade nodded, and merely looped the leather handle of the cable leash over the back hand grip. He closed the back door, settled in his own seat, hit the safety-lock that would secure the back locks and trap Holmes. Then he drove away.

It was a half-hour to his flat—forty-five minutes that afternoon, as he was driving at the height of the rush. He said nothing to Holmes the whole time—nor did he say anything once they arrived, merely collecting his leash and heading inside. No one was in the entry to note Lestrade’s new possession, for better or worse. They went up the lift together, side by side, Lestrade’s fingers crimped tight to the leather leash handle. Two steps through the hall, and he was keying them into the flat.

He refused to look and see Holmes’ reaction. No doubt it would be scorn. It was a simple place, and cheap, its main advantage being proximity to Lestrade’s work. Lestrade himself looked around, realizing for the first time how little effort he’d put into the place: a few mass-produced art posters in cheap frames, a throw rug, second-hand living room set.

He’d spent years hoarding his money, he thought—every penny for his insane plan of someday, somehow, showing up Mycroft Holmes by purchasing him at auction. Money that could have been spent on books, or music, or art, or furniture (or, he admitted, on booze and bad bets) had instead been squirreled away as savings for the day he’d buy Mycroft Fucking Goddamned Prat Holmes. He’d hidden it away during the years of his marriage, already sensing a divorce coming, unwilling to let his wife steal his vengeance over Holmes as well as she’d stolen Lestrade’s dignity, and trust, and faith in their marriage. After the divorce he’d slowly slipped the money into investments and savings accounts to accumulate more money. He’d put people in his debt for favors he might once have done out of simple friendship and good will—or refused to do at all.

He’d been a bit OCD, he thought, looking at the shabby, unloved flat. He’d stripped every bit of juice out of his life, saving it all for a moment that might never have come. But it had come—and Mycroft Holmes now stood with a collar around his neck and a leash in Lestrade’s hand, one more rather worn, second-hand possession in a flat furnished with nothing else.

“I’ve set up a mat for you in the front loo,” he said, without looking at Holmes. Instead he jerked lightly, and led the other man to the front bathroom. It was the larger loo, with tile that had to be a hundred years old, and a footed bathtub, and a sink on a pedestal. He’d put out an inflatable li-low and a sleeping bag he’d bought at Oxfam years back in preparation for this day. “The chipped mug is yours. So’s the toothbrush and comb.” Only then did he look at Holmes. “No clothes, I’m afraid. Didn’t occur to me.”

“It’s not a problem,” Holmes said, softly. He stood with a poise that got under Lestrade’s skin—something impossible to name, but graceful and dignified that shared elements of John Watson’s parade rest and a ballet dancer’s first position and a waiter’s patient readiness.

Lestrade growled. “It will be a problem come winter. I’ll come up with something for you in winter, for outdoors at least.” His eyes narrowed. “Maybe something like Sherlock’s old coat,” he said, and was furious to hear the hurt and anger and loss all crowding around his words and inflections, like a murder of crows fluttering around Sherlock’s body as he fell.

For the first time since he’d been led into the auction, Holmes flinched. He swallowed, eyes dropping to the white honeycomb pattern of the tile. “As you wish,” he said. His voice shook as badly as Lestrade’s.

Lestrade grunted softly, and swore. “I shouldn’t have done this.”

Mycroft risked looking up, and gave a very crooked smile—all grief and loss. “I’m as glad you did,” he said. “It’s better than the other options left open to me.”

Lestrade studied him, thinking of the private buying agent, Crittendon, of Jamie with the odd-jobs slave agency, and of Lady Smallwood. Then he considered his own complicated, angry obsession with this man and his brother. “I wouldn’t count on it,” he said, then brusquely reached out and unclipped the leash from the collar. “I’ll be getting you something I like better later,” he said. “You can wear that one for now, though.” He flicked the tags that the pound had attached. “Don’t go out without them.”

“I don’t think I could remove the collar if I wanted,” Holmes said, voice tart. “Only the top is leather, after all. The rest is Kevlar and metal and who knows what. And locked.

“And it’s going to stay that way,” Lestrade said, tersely. “I’m not sure what duties I’m going to assign you,” he said. “Cleaning and cooking and laundry. Do my taxes. If you’re as good as Sherlock was, I may arrange to bring you to work. I’m not the only to bring in a service slave.”

Mycroft nodded silently. Then, warily, he said, “That’s all?”

Lestrade gave a coarse laugh. “You mean am I planning on making you my bed slave?”

Mycroft lifted a single shoulder in an uneasy shrug. Lestrade laughed again.

“Haven’t decided that, either, sunshine. Haven’t yet determined how far into hell I’m willing to go myself for the privilege of seeing you burn.” With that he turned on the ball of his foot, the thick, spongy material of his shoe-sole squeaking on the porcelain tiles, and left the room, slamming the loo door behind him.

He hadn’t yet allowed himself to even look at Holmes’ body, he thought, angry and embarrassed and guilty and unsure what he thought, or why.

Was it guilt, he thought? Everything else Holmes was experiencing felt like just desserts—fair revenge for slights and abuses he’d dished out casually without a second thought to Lestrade and others, like John Watson, over the years. He’d treated like slaves all those he could get away with treating like slaves, and doled out heaping, steaming piles of humiliation and helpless despair. But Lestrade had to admit he’d not sexually abused anyone he knew of.

Of course, that wasn’t the point, he argued to himself. Holmes was a slave now—to assign him bed duties wasn’t anything to feel guilty about. Holmes had put himself in this position, after all. Feeling guilty about it would be like feeling guilty for ordering Sally to file paperwork, or for telling Patel, the forensics officer who’d replaced Anderson, to hurry up with the site analysis.

Lestrade went out to the kitchen and ordered take away from the Chinese place down the street. He forced himself not to ask what Holmes might like—instead he ordered extra dishes of things he liked, and luxuriated in the wealth of choice. When he was full he scraped the leftovers in heaps onto an enamel pie-plate, put down a large spoon, and went to the loo door, just barely stopping himself from knocking. Instead he swung the door open and put the plate on the floor.

“Your dinner,” he said. “Wash the plate and spoon when you’re done.”

“Yes, sir,” Mycroft said. He was sitting in the coiled folds of the sleeping bag, groin hidden from view. Softly, he said, “May I take a bath, sir?”

Lestrade studied him, and gave a short, terse nod. “Wait till I’ve had my shower, though,” he said. “Don’t want you to use up the hot water.”

“No, sir.”

Lestrade grunted, and turned to go, when Mycroft said, still very softly, “Why, Lestrade?”

“Why what?” Lestrade grumbled.

“Why did you buy me?”

Lestrade huffed. “You were for sale.”

“That’s not it, though, is it?”

Lestrade straightened, staring out to the little hall beyond the door, and the gritty, ancient carpeting. As an owner, he thought, he should flip Holmes the bird. He should refuse to answer, and rub Holmes’ nose in the fact that he had no right to know. He should punish him for daring ask in the first place. He should humiliate him—slap him, whip him, take the food away, punch him black and blue, make him cry, make him beg. Holmes had no right. Lestrade had waited for this day—for this night. For this power. For Mycroft’s helplessness.

And because this was so, he answered, instead.

“Because you treated me and John like slaves even when we were free—and you didn’t care.”

“What?” Mycroft sounded shaken. “Care?”

“You didn’t care.” He spun, then, glowering. “Sherlock? He was a berk. Fucked up, crack-brained idiot. He was a pain in the arse—but he couldn’t help it, and he wasn’t capable of caring. I daresay if he were alive now he’d never bat an eye over what John’s been through since the bastard jumped. He didn’t have it in him to understand without someone forcing it down his throat the whole time. But you?” The anger rose up like bile. “You? You’re capable, you bastard. You understand feelings. You understand pride, and dignity. You understand how little any of us have, and how helpless we all are—and you used us, over and over, to get what you wanted. And you didn’t care.”

And with that he spun back away, and slammed the door, and stormed to his own rooms.

It was a difficult night. Lestrade lay alone, in the never-quite-dark room, listening to the never-quite-silent streets, grappling with the fact that, after years of half-mad planning, he had his revenge in hand. Mycroft Holmes was his slave. He owned the man.

He owned Mycroft Holmes.

In his own dismay and excitement and fear and frustration, he never was anything less than aware of the man down the hall, lying curled, shivering, in the sleeping bag in the front loo. In spite of that awareness, he never knew the truth of that man—that he lay clinging to himself, shaking, guarding secrets, guarding a still-living brother, struggling with the paradox that caring was not an advantage—and the only advantage that could save him, that could have ever saved him.


	2. Minor Discussion Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I discuss some more of what I *do* know about this story, and where it would go if I continued.

Hi, all...

Given the intense response to the "first chapter" of this story--on my part as well as you readers'--I've spent some time today thinking about it, and about what I know about the larger story that lurks behind.

First--yes. It's a slavery story, and as several of you have indicated, slavery is a bad thing. I agree--and I'm fairly sure that on some level this story has to do with my own discomfort at seeing many writers use slavery of one sort or another to justify a variety of BDSM fantasies and sexy times.

People's fantasies are ALWAYS hard to talk about, because it's so easy to forget the critical difference between advocating fantasy and advocating the tropes used in fantasy. Our culture is purely crappy at sorting that out, especially when it comes to sex. If a kid adored roller coasters, no one would ever say in disgusted terms, "I don't know why anyone would want to be trapped in a tiny car and hurled to his death over a complicated track while having no control of his descent." We all understand that what is loved is not real danger, but the fantasy of danger experienced within the knowledge of safety.

That falls apart when it comes to sex fantasies. People say with a straight face, "I don't know why anyone would want to be raped." Or "I can't imagine why anyone would want to be bound and dominated." And in the process they miss the obvious--as obvious as the kid in the roller coaster car whooping over the crests and drops--that what is most wanted is not to be raped, or bound and dominated, but to enjoy the fantasy of being in danger experienced within the knowledge of safety AND PERSONAL CONTROL. 

But even within that, it's important to keep in mind that the fantasy can turn into an unintended lie....especially in stories.

So you end up with wide ranges of people's sex fantasies that strip away the reality so completely that it's easy for people to start mistaking the fantasy for the reality. That can mean idiot men who are actively angry that their lives are failing to conform to the tropes and formulae of Penthouse letters. It can mean talking to young women who seem honestly convinced that "men" are pretty much exactly like the dubious heroes of Harlequin romances. It can lead to things like the "Shades of Grey" stuff, in which the BDSM fails to conform to "good" BDSM practice. And it can lead to slavery stories that leave people like me caught on a precipice, recognizing the value of fantasy, but deeply uneasy at the way the fantasies lie outright about the actual nature of slavery, and the way the stories that flow from the fantasy are, at heart, dishonest about what "real" people might behave like in anything like "real" versions of those settings. I am forever and all ending up trapped between my true belief that we need our wild, roller coaster fantasies--and equal conviction that there's something unhealthy about clinging to stories that lie to us so profoundly.

I live in a nation warped and injured by slavery. It's currently 150 years since the end of the American Civil War, and we're still coping with people clinging so tightly to their fantasy of the south that they feel driven to ignore and belittle the ongoing damage done by slavery to blacks of the time--and onward into the present. I live in a world in which men, driven by their fantasies of sexual dominance, lock women up in basements for decades. I live in a world in which human trafficing remains an ongoing and real problem in the world. I am a sufficient scholar to have studied slavery, and feel safe saying that while there may be better and worse forms of slavery, there is no "good" form of slavery...for the slave, or for the soul of the slave master. And, yet, within that certainty, I'm also sure that there are slave stories that end well, and souls saved, and slaves freed, and nations challenged, and human trafficing thrown aside. There are happy endings within the dark narrative of slavery, not because slavery is good, but because human love and compassion is good, and because moral courage is good.

I know that all of that pompous, moral, scholarly, righteous thought feeds into my readings of slavery fantasies--and I know even more that it is there, breathing life into that unexpected and dark first chapter of "A Slave's Care." I know the story is growing out of my own complicated and uneasy reaction to what I know and to what I read. It grows out of my own response to the value and justification of roller coaster fantasies, and my equal certainty that dishonest stories lead to dishonest people and civilizations. 

What I know about the vast, dark story that lurks beneath: first, it's too big. I know what's going on, and that this is part of Mycroft and Sherlock fighting Moriary AND Magnussen and their allies within that dark slaving world, coping as best they can with the inevitable challenges. It's a big story, in terms of plot points and development arcs. Really, too big for me. But, then, I didn't know that when I typed the first words.

I know that it actually does have a happy ending, not just for Mycroft and Lestrade, but for that fantasy slaving world. If slavery is not overthrown, it is dented and reduced by the efforts of the characters. Within that, Mycroft and Lestrade both learn to care about each other as equals--not as useful subordinate and uncaring superior, or as slave and master, but as friends and lovers.

I know that both are forced to the wall by their own complicated and muddled moral beliefs about status, worth, slavery, heirarchy--and caring. 

I know that the trip includes one hella heap of ugly bits. That's part of what perturbs me: these two and their world are not just cardboard slavery fantasy tropes, and the players contained in the story hurt and bleed...and hurt each other to the point of bleeding. That's not just figurative, it's literal. I know some, though not all the events. Lestrade hurts Mycroft. Mycroft hurts Lestrade. They battle themselves and their culture and each other within the framework of slavery provided, and that framework is brutal.

Is it a "wholesome" story? Actually, yes. That's part of the unsettling alure tempting me to write it. It's wholesome because it tries to tell a story that doesn't lie about how dark slavery is, or how it rips people's lives and souls apart. It's wholesome because it tries to find a plausible way to bring the characters to a happy and moral resolution in spite of that. It tempts me. It would be good to tell the story I see there.

It would also be bad. It would take me away from brighter, happier things. It would take me away from some professional work of my own. It would put me in conflict with people who LIKE their unquestioned BDSM slavery tropes, and who are actually entitled to like those tropes and to enjoy them as roller coaster rides. 

I am actually very much enjoying all of your responses. If nothing else, I am seeing in all of you--in each of you--elements of my own reaction to this story, from uneasy distaste to curious intrigue to conviction that the details make the story.

Now you know a bit more what I'm grappling with. You know some of the underlying considerations. You know that it's a BIG dratted story. 

I see some choices. I could, for example, tell mini-stories within the arcs. There's one--the first time Lestrade seriously injures his new slave--that begs me to tell it, begs me to write Lestrade dragging Mycroft to a grieving John's dispensary for stitches...only to be told he's got to take Mycroft around to the slave entrance. Only to be scolded by John as he sets stitches. It's one little, vivid story inside the arcs. 

Or I could try to tell the big story. I suspect I'd fail. My completion rate for the really long pieces I've started humiliates me. I have too much real life interfering, and too many stories ideas that keep on boiling up, and too much dedication to a Real Pro Fiction that sucks all the long-arc dedication out of me for that one work.

I don't know myself. I don't know if this dark world is worth inflicting on you all....

But at least now you know better what kinds of odd thoughts run through my head as I consider it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I continue to find this a difficult and disturbing story, and a difficult and disturbing topic. It's "NOT* fluffy-fun pron or fic romance. It's also, by definition, not a perfect attempt to discuss slavery in a fictional context. I am, however, at least trying to give serious consideration to the complexity of the subject matter, while still writing what's at heart a story for entertainment and adventure and sentiment. 
> 
> If you want sexy slavery, or sweet slavery, or merely adventure story slavery, this story is likely to continue to be unsatisfying. But if you kind of like seeing a writer martyr herself on the cross of conflicting dramatic goals, it ought to be a properly amusing thing to keep reading. In any case, welcome....I hope it's worth your time.

“Dinner, sir.”

Letrade nodded, as Mycroft placed a platter of food on Letrade’s kitchen table. Sausage and mash again, he thought, grumpily.

“Don’t how to make anything but bangers and mash and toad-in-a-hole and shepherd’s pie, do you?” he said, sitting and prodding the pale sausages.

“I’m afraid I’ve got limited experience in the culinary arts.”

He even sounded regretful—but, then, whatever Lestrade didn’t eat, Mycroft would. Lestrade wasn’t yet able to bring himself to buy the big sacks of slave food in the section of the Tesco right next to the pet section. He told himself it was for his own sake—he disliked the smell of the kibble, and didn’t want to live with that scent filling his little flat and ruining his appetite for the already unsatisfying meals Mycroft cooked. The truth was, he wasn’t comfortable with the idea of treating his possession no differently than he’d treat a dog or a cat or a hamster or a budgie.

He served himself three sausages and a large scoop of mash. Mycroft approached the table again, placing a glass bowl of cold tinned stewed tomatoes beside the platter. Lestrade looked at it bleakly, then looked at his slave, saying in resignation, “Vitamins?”

Mycroft didn’t meet his eyes, his head hanging low, but he nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Lestrade nodded, and served himself a saucer full.

Dinner was no worse than he expected. Mycroft didn’t generally burn things—though that was in part because he failed to brown them in the first place. He got the lumps out of the potatoes, though that generally meant he over-mashed, leading to a rather gluey mess of grayish mash. He seemed to distrust his talents enough to avoid even trying to heat any tinned goods that might plausibly be served chilled.

Lestrade, having succeeded in completing a plate full, risked a cautious question.

“If I ordered you to learn 'the culinary arts,' what would you do?”

Mycroft looked up, then—for the first time since Lestrade had come home that evening. For the first time in weeks his eyes were alive and curious. He actually gave the question thought.

“I’d need a permission slip to access library materials. I daresay you’d want to accompany me,” he said, “You’d have to give me a pass to use the internet. And—it would probably cost you a bit more, and you’d be faced with some actual serious failures.” As though forgetting his slave standing for a moment he smiled—a natural expression Lestrade wasn’t sure he had ever seen on the man’s face, even before he’d purchased him. “I know I don’t cook well,” he said ruefully, “But I do manage to cook minimally edible food. You may not be so lucky at first, if I start experimenting.”

Lestrade found himself chuckling and flying a brow in mild disagreement. “You’ve set a low bar for ‘edible.’”

The other man grimaced in agreement, then retreated into his more common reserve, eyes dropping from Lestrade’s again. “True,” he confessed, in what at least appeared to be true humility and repentance. “In any case, better meals would cost more, and you’d have to endure a learning curve—and you would have to arrange for me to have information.”

“And if I went to a second-hand bookstore and purchased you an old copy of Mrs. Beeton’s?”

“I believe her recipes often ran to large joints and Victorian formal meals,” Mycroft said, without looking up. “I’m not sure you’d find the result affordable or practical.”

Letrade grunted agreement. “Remind me tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll arrange access to the library and internet. Once you’ve done some basic reading, research costs and I’ll try to budget you some more grocery money.”

“You’d want me to shop?” Mycroft sounded startled—but quickly returned to his previous bland behavior.

Lestrade grimaced, then. The slave was making a good point. In the time since he’d bought Mycroft, he’d never allowed the other man to leave the flat unaccompanied. He’d never allowed the slave access to his accounts or allowed him to handle money and purchases, even for the household. All he’d permitted his slave to do was write out shopping lists on old scrap envelopes. Lestrade would either pick the shopping up himself on the way home from work, or, rarely, arrange for delivery, letting Mycroft accept the goods at the door of the flat.

On those occasions he made sure to fit his slave with a GPS shock collar. Responsible owners did: they were accountable for any damage a slave did, and would be charged double rates if they were found culpable in that damage through negligence or reckless lack of forethought. As long as Mycroft wore the collar, he would be unable to cross the threshold without receiving a continuous shock—and his location would be logged into permanent records in cloud storage, just in case anyone ever brought suit against Lestrade over Mycroft’s behavior.

He considered the issue. He could, he supposed, reprogram the collar. It was simple enough to log in a destination, a route, and an acceptable window of time to be gone from the flat. And he had to admit it would be a luxury to have Mycroft do the shopping, pick up Lestrade’s suits from the dry cleaner, pick up packages from the post…

He considered it, studying Mycroft. Without thinking, he said, idly, “Have to go to Oxfam, get you some trou and shoes.”

Mycroft started slightly, and almost—almost—looked up in surprise. Lestrade could see the struggle to stop himself. “As you wish, sir,” he said, voice unusually hesitant.

Lestrade had given him some of his worn out clothes the second week he’d owned Mycroft.

It hadn’t been generosity. Both knew it, though Lestrade hoped Mycroft didn’t know the real reason he’d shoved the too-short jogging trousers and the hole-ventilated Ts at his slave.

The truth was Mycroft’s nakedness had become an endless, nagging question. Dressed, Lestrade felt he could fall comfortably into treating him as an asexual blob settled uneasily in the center of Lestrade’s life. Naked, he became a challenge, a reproach, an object of revulsion, an object of desire: never the same twice, and always provocative in his vulnerable nudity. When Letrade was angry—and he was angry at Mycroft often in those first weeks and months—it became repulsively tempting to turn torturer—to get out whips, leave marks, aim at tender genitals, work to make the object of his frustration cry and beg and whine.

He hated himself for the temptation. It wasn’t him—it was the anger speaking, and the ease. Nothing would stop him. No one would question him, not even Mycroft.

When he was cold, and lonely, and tired, Lestrade would climb out of the shower only to trip yet again over the heaped pile of bedding that remained Mycroft’s nest. He’d think, almost reflexively, that inviting his slave to share his bed would be a positive act of generosity… Mycroft would be grateful for the chance to sleep in clean sheets, and Lestrade wouldn’t go to bed alone…

He hated himself for the temptation. It wasn’t him. It was the loneliness speaking, and the ease. After all, Mycroft was his slave. Lestrade was allowed to claim him.

When dinner was late, and Lestrade was hungry and angry that it was beans and toast again, he’d suffer a flash of vision, imagining turning the bubbling pan of beans over Mycroft’s pale skin. Then his gorge would rise and he’d storm from the little, shabby room, desperate to be away from the proof that evil lived in everyone, including him.

It was the nakedness talking, he told himself sometimes. Not him, not the anger, or the loneliness, or the weariness, or the frustration. It was as though Mycroft’s pink freckled skin whispered suggestions to “the Master” that were not native to Lestrade.

He scowled and refused to acknowledge his slave’s surprise. He gathered up his plates and the platter and carried them to the counter. For the first time since he’d bought Mycroft, he put away the food himself, and while he didn’t wash the dishes he stacked them in the sink, scraped and rinsed and ready to be washed. Only then did he say, gruffly, “Winter’s coming. Not summer any more. Time I got you something anyway.”

The silence stretched out between them. Then, voice brittle and tense, Mycroft said, “Maybe something like Sherlock’s Belstaff?”

The taunt Lestrade had thrown at his slave on the day he’d purchased him hung there. Lestrade snapped around, meeting Mycroft’s eyes…

The other man was as shocked. He was also angry, hurt, frightened, fierce—Lestrade could see an entire spectrum of feelings moving in Mycroft’s eyes, coloring his expression, even subtly controlling his stance. The Iceman wasn’t just ice any more—he was fire and water and deep, dark earth holding secrets and desires Lestrade would never have guessed at previously.

He watched as paranoia won, and Mycroft forced himself back into humble passivity. “My apologies, master,” he said, using a word he usually avoided when “sir” would do as well. “I have…” he faltered, appearing to search for a word to cover his transgression.

Lestrade made the same effort. It was cheek, and arrogance, and chutzpah. It was sauce, and if a street criminal had sassed him he’d have risked a quick backhand upside his head. It was outright rebellion from a slave—behavior bad enough some would have killed Mycroft on the spot and sold his carcass to be made into dog food.

Lestrade’s inner angel, though, whispered it was also a fair shot, truly aimed and entirely deserved by its target. He closed his eyes and forced himself to relax, then said, “Maybe not like the Belstaff.”

They looked at each other, then, the moment of transgression resolved—but not settled.

Lestrade shrugged. “Steep learning curve,” he said. “Like cooking. We’re both learning, yeah?”

Mycroft didn’t speak, but nodded. His eyes were guarded and his face was still—but Lestrade could feel that brilliant brain turning and turning and turning.

He turned away from his slave, and opened the kitchen door. “Going to take a shower,” he said. “Feel free to do the same once I’m done.”

“Yes, sir.”

He slipped out the door, and fled to the bathroom.

Having a slave was much different to what he’d expected, and the learning curve was not just steep, it was precipitous. The chasms on either side of his progress terrified him.

oOo

 

He’d fantasized owning Mycroft Holmes for years…since the first time he’d been treated like a utility by the sarky bureaucrat. A baby-minder for Sherlock. A mere minion, in spite of his standing at the Met and with MI5. Mycroft had put Lestrade’s lower-class Celtic West Country snub nose out of joint. He had offended the detective’s sense of his own worth, not to mention the worth of both the Met and MI5. He’d been such an arrogant pillock that the sudden thought that Holmes would eventually tempt bureaucratic fate too far, and end up a slave through administrative eminent domain, had been too sweet. It had seemed too much like justice.

It wasn’t proving to be so, now he had his victory.

For Lestrade, the worst part was discovering that owning the slave recorded in government books as Lot 21, Commonwealth Auction 967,290, Third Calling, 28/8/2017 did not satisfy him. Lestrade had given years to the fantasy: he’d imagined over and over the day he would buy the man who so casually humiliated him and his team, and dominated the Met in its own bailiwick. He’d imagined a thousand first orders he’d give. He’d imagined a thousand expressions that might force Holmes out of his artificial indifference. He’d imagined his own sense of being redeemed—made whole. His pride given back, his integrity returned, his years of having to play lick-spittle to a “minor government official” washed away in one resounding turn of fortune.

He had never asked himself properly what would happen then.

The purchase? That had been as close to meeting his dreams as anything ever did. The adrenal rush of the auction, the feeling of victory, even the shocked understanding of how much money he’d have to hand over, had provided one hell of a rush.

The decision to deprive Holmes of the broad arrow, and to walk him to the car naked as a baby, was more nuanced, and he didn’t find the nuances pleasing. Not really. Yes, he’d felt a resounding sense of power and satisfaction in giving in to his own malicious impulse to refuse to purchase the prisoners’ uniform. Yes, he’d felt an emotional intensity in walking Holmes to the car that had rivaled almost anything he’d ever experienced.

But later he’d squirmed, thinking about it. He wasn’t a cruel man. Rough, yes. It was a rough world, and his background, upbringing, and career made a bit of roughness necessary if he was to survive. He was capable of a sharp word, a quick and painful clip to a miscreant’s head, a stinging slap dealt out to a whore who refused to be bustled into the paddy wagon. But he had never been a man who enjoyed the roughness, or used it if decency would work as well. His people might have been poor, but as his gran had said, they had standards.

Letrade wasn’t sure he knew the man who’d enjoyed depriving a helpless slave of his clothing and forcing him to parade his naked, owned status through his own former domain. He definitely did not know the man who’d felt such excitement over it—pride, victory, vindictive glee, even a seriously unsettling stir of sexual arousal.

He hadn’t thought he had such impulses in him.

So there was that. His victory had been tainted from the first moment he grasped it, and the taint remained, coloring far too many moments since.

Just as bad, he didn’t know what to do now he had the man in his possession. He’d never planned for it; he’d never sorted out the practical logistics; he’d never asked himself what he wanted to do with the man once he had him. He’d never asked himself how he’d manage a slave—or pay for him. Food, drink, health care, clothing if any—all that was Lestrade’s responsibility now, and while the government would not hold him to any high standard, his own conscience was already muttering that the government’s standard was so low as to be non-existent.

He could beat his slave at will.

He could starve him.

He could rape him.

He could allow others to beat him or rape him. He could even charge them for the privilege, and pocket the proceeds.

He could enter his slave into the fighting pits, forcing him to defend himself against whatever opponent the fight masters thought might entertain the crowd and excite the bettors. Lestrade had once seen a slave torn apart in a fight pit by a pack of drugged feral dogs. There had been nothing left at the end but smears of blood and small fragments of bone.

He could kill him…or merely allow him to die in stages, starved and ill and injured, but not attended to.

All the government demanded was that Lestrade keep his new possession under control at all times, prevent him from being a public nuisance, and arrange for his disposal when and if he did die.  Well, that and a few minor things as well. Lestrade would pay lower taxes as a slave owner, but be obliged to pay for a license and a fee to register his possession, for example. If the Inland Revenue ever doubted he still owned a slave they could demand he provide access to one live slave on demand. But on the whole the government cared only that they were able to make money off of of all slave sales, and that from that point on they were absolved of all responsibility for the resulting dependent non-citizens. It was so much simpler and more convenient than the long-since abandoned socialist notions of the late eighteen and very early nineteen hundreds.

That, though, was as much concern as the government showed. Their stated aim was to see all potential “excess human assets” transferred to responsible citizens, freeing the government from all responsibility and liability. There were no poor houses, no homeless shelters, no public housing. The national health system was restricted to free citizens, and required proof of solvency in the form of either job registration, investment income, or savings. There was no public schooling. Charities were private. Moral standards were the purview of priests and philosophers—or more often, spinster aunts and Ladies Bountiful. The government had allied itself with the immortal visionary, Ebenezer Scrooge, with the one compassionate difference: rather than wishing the poor to speedy death in the workhouse, the government wished them to “secure placement” in the shackles of private ownership—with fifteen percent of every slave purchase sent directly to the tax collector.

But taxes were at an all-time low in England, and entrepreneurial ventures were not just common, but constant and driven by fierce determination on the part of the entrepreneurs to never, never cause the government to consider selecting them for slavery by eminent domain.

Lestrade had never really liked slavery—but it had been the norm for longer than he’d been alive. It set the tone of every interaction in his world. He had joined the rest of the world in talking passionately about the abuses of the institution and the need for tighter standards and regulation. But as a copper he’d also argued the other side, citing the difficulty in enforcing stricter laws and determining personal accountability. Mainly he’d agreed with the indeterminate many that it was tawdry to starve a slave, or kill one, or rape one, or any of a number of other things---but that it was nonetheless legal, and what was one to do?

Now he had a slave of his own…

A slave who angered him. Whose service was far from being a luxury. Whose dependence was a burden. Whose internal independence was a taunt. A slave smarter than him, whose intelligence galled and teased Lestrade. A slave more controlled than him, whose collected poise put Lestrade to shame. A slave who reminded him of Sherlock, in all his glory and all his horrible nastiness. A slave whose human warmth tempted him—whose supple body tripped off desires, social and sexual, he was not prepared to face. A slave who forced Lestrade, day after day, to rise weary from his bed and pick up the heavy yoke of ownership.

No—owning a slave was nothing Lestrade could have predicted. Yet—the truth was he couldn’t imagine selling Mycroft, now. He knew, to his frustration and shame, that he’d worry. He’d check, time and again, to be sure the new owner was treating Mycroft well. He knew he’d insist on a contract giving him first refusal and the right to buy Mycroft back if the new owner ever chose to sell.

He’d paid his money. His bank statement was so scant as to frighten him. But Mycroft Holmes was his, and he couldn’t imagine ever allowing that to change.

oOo

“The Master” was going to buy him clothes, Mycroft thought that night, caught between anger and resentment and amazement and gratitude. Lestrade was going to get him clothes. And shoes. He was going to give him the freedom to leave the flat and go to the library, and the grocery, and run errands around town. He’d get Mycroft an oyster card so he could travel on the Tube.

He would have pants, maybe. A vest for cold days. A coat to wear in bad weather. He’d have pockets again. (“What has he got in his pocketses” his subconscious whispered, then began to suggest all the secrets he still held—his hidden magic rings…)

The  past months had been hard—harder than anything he’d ever experienced before, not least because he had found he had no talent for his new role in life. He cooked dreadfully. He cleaned indifferently. The searing boredom of day after day trapped in the little flat drove him mad. For so much of his life he’d scorned Sherlock for his whines of boredom: in Mycroft’s mind only the stupid could be bored, for the intelligent could always find something to occupy their minds. He had discovered that the boredom of slavery, though, defeated him.

He’d tried watching telly, taking advantage of Lestrade’s license. He’d given up in a matter of days: the only thing that made the plots watchable was that the characters were so universally stupid and immature they did things no sane person could predict. Happily married characters ran off and had affairs with blatantly unsuitable partners, then hid the connection so badly that discovery was certain. Murderers practically signed their artwork and left a business card, the better for a bumbling and ineffective lot of coppers and amateur detectives to look them up later. Upon being discovered, the killers would take flight in transparently hopeless effort to escape. Their pursuers would give chase, forgetting even simple technological advantages like mobile phones that would allow them to coordinate a trap with little if any effort…

He knew he had reached his limit when he concluded in all seriousness that the Teletubbies were among the least offensive shows on the screen, being soothing and unburdened with needless melodrama.

Yet without anything to do, he found himself facing the challenge of not murdering his owner—and oh, the temptation. By the end of a long day of doing little but cleaning and cooking and watching Laa-laa and Po frolic and Thomas the Tank Engine overcome the problem of the day, Mycroft found himself a bundle of turbulent aggression and unanchored longings. When Lestrade came in, surly and demanding, and forever unsatisfied with Mycroft’s efforts, it was all he could do not to rip the copper’s head off and dance in the jetting fountain of blood from his jugular veins and carotid arteries.

Yet it was forced upon his understanding that Lestrade was far, far better than he should ever have expected. The man made such obvious efforts not to give in to casual cruelty. He was honest. His years as a copper and as a DI, commanding a team of detectives, seemed to have taught him patience and clarity. His commands were reasoned, his criticisms usually both just and useful.

Barring the very first days of their shared bondage, Mycroft had to say the man was…admirable. Not, perhaps, kind. Not clever, like Sherlock—though equally, he seldom gave in to Sherlock’s malice and venom. He was sensible, if not inspired. He was steady. He was even showing increasing signs of generosity, and he cared for Mycroft’s well-being in ways no one he could recall ever had.

Mummy had not been a bad mother, but she had trusted to the professionalism of her carefully vetted au pairs, nannies, and tutors with good reason. Mummy didn’t fret whether Mycroft was happy, or healthy, or learning well: she asked her minions, and her minions answered honestly and accurately. Nor did the minions care any more than their professional pride demanded. Mycroft’s teachers when he went to school, his professors at uni, his mentors at the Foreign Office: no one fretted over Mycroft. Fretting was a rare, special luxury Mycroft knew best because he was able to provide it to Sherlock—a gift of love and concern Mycroft could give that he himself had never known.

Yet Lestrade was showing signs of worrying about him. He checked that there was enough food for Mycroft to eat, even if it was eaten only after Lestrade had eaten his fill. He made sure Lestrade washed his own bedding—and not just out of distaste for the sweet funk the sleeping bag never entirely lost, regardless of washer or laundry soap. He asked if Mycroft needed the heat turned up, and he even offered to make his slave a cup of tea if he was already making one for himself. He reminded Mycroft of the regulations limiting a slave’s movements and actions, and not just out of concern that Mycroft might cost him fines or make him pay reparations for damage done.

It could be worse. It could be much, much worse. And if sometimes he felt the tension in the little flat rise, and suspected Lestrade was thinking about the range of services he could command his slave provide—the trouble was that Mycroft was finding himself not entirely averse to the idea of providing those services.

No—he was actually attracted to the idea.

He spent hours trying to determine why. His sexual appetites, while more vigorous than Sherlock’s appeared to be, had never been so great as to intrude on his life. He had not been easily distracted by attractive men—or for that matter, attractive women, though women were not his general type. He’d felt more desire since his purchase than he could recall in the decade prior.

Was it something subconscious having to do with his nakedness, or his soft, form-revealing second-hand clothes? And, yet, on the whole he and Lestrade seemed to have come to accept skin as skin, and he couldn't recall any sign that sloppy joggers and damaged T were erotic cues for his owner. Was it his dependence? He feared that was perhaps part of it—he needed Lestrade, now, and he thought perhaps some part of him longed for the comforting reassurance of affection to convince him he was safe, and wanted in all his terrifying vulnerability. Was it his uneasy guilt? He’d come to realize how profound and real the rage had been that had driven Lestrade to purchase him—and he’d begun to understand how constantly he’d offended against the man’s pride and sense of self-worth. If on the one hand Mycroft was too sensible to blame himself for his own slavery—or at least for Lestrade purchasing him—he had concluded that he was to some degree responsible for the injuries that had motivated that purchase.

And then, of course, there was the real guilt. A living brother wild in the wind, while Lestrade mourned a dead phantom falling eternally from the ledge of a hospital roof-line. A plot under way to change the shape of a nation that had necessitated Mycroft arranging for his own reclassification through eminent domain. An ongoing campaign that Mycroft knew he would now only become more involved in, now that Lestrade was giving him more freedom to range, and more power to act in the civilian world.

He wasn’t sure if he was committing treason against his owner or not, in using the camouflage of personal slavery to battle the monolithic abomination of systemic slavery. He wasn’t sure if he should just trust Lestrade to help him—as he’d often trusted him to watch over Sherlock in the years before. But he knew that trust or not, treason or not, he was at war—a general in hiding—and that he would not do anything to knowingly risk his battle plans.

The next day he opened the window of the flat and tossed out toast crumbs from breakfast onto the windowsill. Soon the pigeons came to feed. One, trained in ways alien to the rest of the flock, continued past the boundary line marked by the window and entered the kitchen. When it came out again a small band lay around its leg. Once it was full it took flight, returning at last to a small private pigeon coop in Chelsea, where an agent removed the band, decoded Mycroft’s message about his new privileges and freedoms, and passed the word to Lady Smallwood and Anthea, using a secret address and file protocol established by Q, hidden in his department of the Secret Service.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a dark chapter. There's some blood, and gore, and Lestrade loses his temper. People behave in ways you won't find very Mary Sue. For what it's worth, they get past it, and come out more or less admirable. Meanwhile the plot thickens. Slavery still just plain sucks.)

The clothes Lestrade brought back from Oxfam for Mycroft were terrible—terrible in more ways than Mycroft knew how to address. Not least among their terrible attributes, though, was the certain truth that Lestrade had not intended them as a mockery. Mycroft might have taken some kind of inner strength from mockery, steeling his spine and setting his jaw in contained fury, as he had when he’d been walked down Pall Mall naked that first day. Anger is a good anesthetic, replacing pain with resolve.

Instead Mycroft could deduce easily that effort, and even intended kindness had gone into the choices. Lestrade had provided warm, unfashionable corduroy trousers, the sort of thing that spoke of old men maundering on about the days before the first call-up, when British men and women had been free. The nap was, if not new and plushy, still in good shape. The underlying weave was sound. He’d even taken care to choose the sizes Mycroft had given, failing only in having no eye for details that might have saved them both some embarrassment. Women’s sizes were, after all, different to men’s, and inseam measurements mattered even when the clothes were meant for the right sex.

The first day Mycroft dressed to go out, he stood in the little bathroom peering into the dim, foggy mirror. Looking back was a stranger—a shattered man with a slave’s collar, wearing a burgundy zip-up hoodie that clashed with…well. Everything. Mycroft suspected it even clashed with his DNA. With his soul. He knew his trousers were too short, riding slightly above his ankles. The shirt he wore under the hoodie buttoned wrong-way-to, and was of white poly-cotton, dim from too many washings.

The shoes were the final blow—and had been offered with both kindness and joy.

“Same kind I get myself,” Lestrade had said, holding them out. “Sturdy. Comfy. I can go out on a case in friggin’ January and my toes are warm and my arches don’t ache.”

They were perhaps the ugliest hybrid of gentleman’s oxford and trainer ever devised by man. No doubt they did valiant service for Lestrade. They were just formal enough to establish that he’d shown willing in the "gentleman and an officer" category—then proceeded to ignore all matters of style beyond that.

They were too wide for Mycroft’s long, slim feet, and the heel slopped up and down as he walked, promising blisters in spite of the double layer of socks he’d put on. But he’d made himself thank Lestrade for them, and worked hard to sound not only sincere—but touched.

Because, to his horror, he was touched. His owner—the man who’d purchased him out of long held longing for revenge--had spent an afternoon of his free weekend picking through the leavings at Oxfam, searching for not merely clothing to cover his slave’s nakedness, but for what in his mind would be good, serviceable clothes. As he’d shown what he’d bought, he’d performed the poor man’s dance of gift-giving, hiding some price tags, while boasting of brilliant prices scrawled on others. Every word suggested that, on the whole, he’d spent more money than he could really afford to get Mycroft the best he could find. Or at least, what he considered the best.

Mycroft didn’t ask if there’d been a rack or two of suits in the far corner of the second-hand shop. He’d be willing to bet it had simply not occurred to Lestrade to search for clothing for Mycroft on that rack. Or, even more likely, he’d thought of it and refrained, rather than raise painful memories of a life and status that were no longer available to the man he now owned.

He’d brought a new collar, too. Fully programmable, with a USB cord to link it to a smart phone or tablet or computer, allowing the owner to then set parameters of travel and windows of expected travel-time. He’d shown it to Mycroft, excited to be offering the other man greater mobility and…well. Not freedom. Mycroft was under no illusion that his owner confused the mobility offered by the collar with manumission.

“No idea how to program the thing,” he told Mycroft, with a rueful grin. “I’ll need your help figuring it out, I daresay.” He opened the package and took out the woven-linked collar. It came with a lead—all the collars Lestrade owned had come with leads. The first collar, from the auction rooms, had been little more than hemp rope with base-metal fittings and padlocks. Later he’d bought a more handsome one, of supple oil-tanned leather, with a matching leash. The new collar had a twisted-wire cable lead to match the high-tech style of the collar itself. He held it all out to Mycroft. “Try it on. See if I got a decent fit. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Which was true enough, Mycroft thought, at least in theory. It was harder to be sure when Lestrade came home after a hard day only to find dinner burnt and Mycroft strung tighter than a fiddle-string, mad with boredom and anger and frustration.

He kept a bland face as he slipped the collar on and fastened it. “It will do,” he said, unwilling to claim it was comfortable—though it actually was.

At least, physically. Pyschically it burned on his throat, grated his skin, ripped at his courage. He doubted that any effort to manufacture it to a higher standard would help.

He handed it back. “Leave the directions out. I’ll read them over tonight and show you how to program the settings tomorrow morning.” He knew better than to suggest he set them himself. Lestrade wouldn’t tolerate that much latitude—and once he’d entered his ownership details and his pass and his finger prints, Mycroft would not be able to sneak in and revise any orders Lestrade programmed in.

Lestrade gave Mycroft a slave’s library card, with a generous “no limits” placed on what Mycroft could read or take out. He provided a less generous debit card with a few hundred pounds in it, “for shopping and errands.” By the time he was done that Saturday afternoon, the world had changed. Mycroft could go out in the world once more, if only as a lowly, collared domestic slave running menial errands for his master.

And now he was preparing to go out for the first time. He had a shopping list tucked in his pocket that he’d put together that morning, after Lestrade left. He’d showered, and combed his hair, and considered attempting to trim the shaggy locks that only showed up his retreating hairline in ways he could only deplore. He changed his mind. Trimming his own hair was probably something he should ask permission to do. Even as tolerant an owner as Lestrade might prove touchy.

He dressed.

Lestrade had put the collar on him that morning, knowing he’d be going out.

Now he stood and looked at himself. His heart quailed, and he was appalled to see his lips quiver.

It would be his first time out of the little flat since Lestrade had dragged him there, naked and shaken, over three months before. He had never really liked travel, or time spent in mobs and throngs. He’d been diagnosed as having mild agoraphobia, and shyness kept under control only by willpower and discipline. He’d been able to cope, going out as Mycroft Holmes, “minor bureaucrat,” dressed in his posh suits and playing the role of a man who’d got where he was by knowing the right people and having the right connections. The role had been armor.

He went to the door, a limp canvas tote over one arm to carry his books. The tote held two net bags for groceries, later. The debit card, and the library card, and a lock-card for the flat floated uncased in his trouser pocket. He put out a hand to open the door.

He couldn’t. His hand froze on the knob. His breath stuttered in his chest.

He had minions, still, he thought. Hidden minions, secret minions—but minions. He had money—far more than his owner, in accounts hidden and locked away from the most rigorous governmental accounting. He could ask his minions to do the shopping, get the books. He could ask them to falsify the travel record the collar would log into an online cloud account. He didn’t have to do this. There were other options.

Only he couldn’t. He had to do it—he had to live as a slave would live. He couldn’t risk the cover. He dared not make a single misstep.

He calmed himself, using old, familiar routines to steady his pulse and relax his breathing. He turned the knob, and stepped out, making sure it locked behind him.

He’d done it.

Once out, it was easier. He went to the library first. He considered the variety of cookbooks available, and settled at last for a simple one that appeared aimed at a beginner’s market—students just leaving home for uni, newlyweds, men and women recently widowed or fallen on hard times. The recipes were clear, and focused on unpretentious meals—but Lestrade already showed signs of preferring such foods much of the time. He smiled as he looked at a recipe for spagh bol, followed by a simple beef stew, and an American-style chili. The ingredient lists were longer than he’d hoped, but not so long as to be intimidating. The instructions were clear, with helpful drawings and photographs to provide extra information.

He slipped the book in his tote, and moved on, picking out a recent book on the history of the early 20th century, by an Oxford don he admired. He added several novels—long, meandering ones that might take up some of the endless time that weighed on him so heavily at the flat. He considered adding a complete physics course on DVD, but decided reluctantly that it was too likely to offend Lestrade, rubbing in the difference in their mental acuity.

When he got to the checkout desk, he found there were two lines—one for slaves, one for freemen. Slaves only advanced when there were no freemen waiting to check out. It was over an hour before Mycroft left the building, and he was already three chapters into one of his novels when he did leave.

The next stop was the grocery. He referred to the cookbook often as he shopped, picking out ingredients as he went. The chili seemed promising—beans were cheap, after all. And it was simple, and hearty. He bought beef for a stew, and ground meat for a meatloaf, and went on to buy vegetables and fruits, and splurged on jars of spices and herbs—thyme and sage and cumin coriander and chili powder. Eggs, because Lestrade did like a nice breakfast. And decent juice, not the pale, bitter brand Lestrade usually bought. Good bread—Mycroft hadn’t seen good bread since he’d been declared government property.  The wire cart was full. He went to the check-out.

Once more, there were two lines. The errands were taking most of the day—he was suddenly terribly glad he’d headed out in the morning. He couldn’t have managed it if he’d started after noon. When he was done he started the long walk back to the flat.

The tote and net bags were heavy. He himself was, he found, less fit than he’d been when he entered slavery. Three-plus months housebound had stripped him of muscle and cut into his wind. He panted, hot and miserable, as he plodded toward the terraced building where Lestrade lived.

There was a flicker of motion, just enough to alert his peripheral vision. His head spun, and he studied the walkways. No one on his side—but on the other a lean, short little man with a too-clever face studied him.

Mycroft’s pulse staggered and leapt. The little man on the other side of the road raised a hand, toasting Mycroft with a pint can of cheap lager. He winked.

Mycroft veered, heading across the street—only to have the emergency shock-system of the collar conclude he had passed out of the expected parameters of his trip. He shrieked, two steps out into the roadway, knees buckling. A car was approaching. He knew it and couldn’t move—he was falling, crashing to the ground. The shock ripped through him again and again, and the security alarm wheeped and wailed, telling everyone in range a slave was attempting to escape his limits.

The car braked, swerved, crashed, hitting a parked vehicle at the roadside, then ploughing on, taking out the streetlight at the corner.

Mycroft crept, desperate, toward the pavement he’d come from. Only when his entire body returned to his proper route did the shocks end and the security alerts go silent.

By then the constables had arrived, though.

It was hours before Lestrade was able to collect his erring slave from the nearby station.

The total damages exceeded ten thousand pounds at estimate. The groceries had been lost, flattened by passing traffic. Mycroft’s second-hand clothes were dirty and torn. He’d kept his tote, with the library books, and the cards in his pockets. That seemed to be something—

Until Lestrade later realized that Mycroft had spent the entire month’s budget for groceries---and lost them all.

Mycroft couldn’t even explain why he’d veered from his course. Lestrade must not know about Moriarty—he must never know about Mycroft’s hidden mission.

 

 

Three hundred quid.  The idiot had spent three hundred quid for what he thought was a week’s shopping. Three hundred Lestrade could barely afford: he’d gone his limit just getting Mycroft’s clothes and collar and totes and shoes. And then there were the damages—two cars nearly totaled, one traffic light to be replaced, fines for disturbing the peace, more fines to help pay for constabulary services. The total was more than Mycroft himself had cost. Lestrade would be years paying off the debt out of his limited paycheck. The limited savings he’d had left after buying Mycroft were wiped out already.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to hit something—preferably Mycroft. He wanted to scream and rant and storm out to a pub for a pint and a good solid tantrum with blokes who’d understand.

No one would understand. Certainly not blokes. Blokes on the whole didn’t buy slaves, and if they did they weren’t slaves like Mycroft—they were blokes themselves, who knew the worth of a tenner in your pocket and knew to watch their masters’ pennies. Or they were the daughters of blokes who knew not to buy ground beef and lamb and seasonings and the good in-store bakery bread and the only-posh-people-buy-it juice with the pulp in and the sweet smell of fresh squeezed oranges—not all at one go. And they sure as hell knew not to buy it all and lose it wandering across a street like a drunk on walkabout.

“Why?” he asked, leaning over the kitchen table. “There was no reason to cross the street.”

“I thought I…I.. I mean, someone…I thought I saw someone I knew,” Mycroft stuttered, eyes wild with fear and dismay. His icy demeanor was stripped away, and he sat limp, tenderly stroking the raw skin of his elbow, where it stuck through the holes in his shirt and hoodie. There were bloodstains over both arms, and more on his knees. The scabs were the thin ones you got with pavement burn—serum and blood mixed, and the raw under-layers of the epidermis sticky and shiny where they weren’t ripped to hell and back. “I didn’t…I forgot.” He said it with the stunned voice of someone who never forgot anything, only to forget the most important things of all.

“Do you know what you’ve cost me?”

Mycroft froze, and a vestige of his old hauteur returned. He nodded a tiny, cold nod. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry won’t pay the rent,” Lestrade growled, slamming a fist down on the surface of the table. “Sorry won’t cover the power, or the water, or get me to work in the morning. I don’t know how I’m going to cover this. Sell the car…” He narrowed his eyes. “Sell you. You’re almost worth enough to cover the damages, anyway. Assuming I can get what I paid for you.”

Resale on slaves was variable. Depreciation tended to be slow, but much like finding new work, a slave was what he’d done most recently. Lestrade had bought a high-quality government clerk. If he sold Mycroft, the new owner would only be purchasing a largely unexperienced domestic. It wasn’t logical, but some things weren’t. Lestrade would be most likely to have to sell Mycroft at a loss, and to a job-lot business like the one that had been at the auction, looking for promising second-hand slaves to pass on to other purchasers. The turnaround was quick. The purchasers were often hard-up, and determined to squeeze every last bit of value they could out of a slave, right up until they sold the corpse for dog food.

Mycroft winced. His mouth opened, as though to say, “Please, don’t.” He stopped himself.

The discipline caught in Lestrade’s craw. “Fuck. Bloody, goddamned, fucking fucketty fuck.” He was up and prowling the little kitchen. He was hungry, and there was nothing much to eat. He was tired, and too desperate and frightened to hope to sleep. His gut instinct and his trained reflexes both demanded he attend to the injured man on the other side of the table—he was a copper, a good copper, and leaving a man bleeding felt wrong. But another part of him wanted to do what many, if not all owners would do to a slave who’d done as much damage as Mycroft had: get out a whip and lash the man raw.

“You can’t just—there’s a reason for the goddamned collar,” he snarled. “It’s to keep you on track. One step—you shouldn’t have got even one step off the curb before the shock and the alarm stopped you. How damned fast were you going? Who was it? It’s not like you’ve got any friends.” He let his voice twist the words, substituting sarcasm for the beating he wanted to give his slave. “No one from your old office is going to admit they even know you.”

Mycroft looked away, jaw setting, but he nodded. “It was a mistake. I won’t do it again. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry. Sorry? Thanks to you I’m in debt for the next twenty years or more. I don’t even have the cash to get us through the month. What were you thinking of?” He spun, pacing in all the room available, feet slamming into the shabby linoleum tile.

“I was thinking you might enjoy a decent meal for a change,” Mycroft snapped back, eyes on fire, temper rising to meet Lestrade’s. “You didn’t tell me the money was supposed to last the month.”

The accusation, too true, cut away the last of Lestrade’s control. He needed to strike, needed to somehow express his anger at his slave in some way that established his dominance, and Mycroft’s deserved inferiority. He groped into the plastic container he’d put at the end of the counter to hold the slave paraphernalia—the various collars and leads, the licenses and medical records. He wanted the leather lead, he thought. He could imagine it—the smack of the lead on Mycroft’s stubborn, reproachful face. His fist closed around a the first lead in the container, and he swung out, arm moving in a smooth, glorious arc, already anticipating the slap of leather on skin, and Mycroft falling back, undone.

Instead, in a pattern he was never quite able to sort out afterward, Mycroft’s cheek seemed to peel away from his skull, opening out like a petal and showing muscle and fat. The man screamed and folded on himself, hands reaching up to find the dangling, horrible flap hanging down.

Lestrade froze, unable to take it in. He frowned and looked at his hand—his fist, holding the wound lengths of the wire cable lead. The upper loops were bloody and covered in gore.

He’d grabbed the wrong lead. The slim wire cable had sliced through skin, scraping up the top layers of Mycroft’s face with almost as much precision as a flensing knife. Lestrade’s gorge rose, and he leaned over the sink, spewing. Then he turned and lunged for Mycroft, grabbing a roll of paper towels off the counter.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, fuck, I’m sorry, it was the wrong lead, fuck. Here, look at me.” He drew the other man’s fingers away from his face and eased the flap of skin and fat back into place. The cut seemed to run in a U, the bottom of the letter near his mouth, the sides shooting up along the jawline and cheekbone toward his hairline. “Ok, you need to keep this in place. Apply pressure. That’s right…”

He was already frantically trying to decide what to do. He didn’t have a slave-doctor for Mycroft yet, and the NHS wouldn’t take him in the hospitals intended for citizens. His finances meant he couldn’t afford to do the job right in the first place—no prompt reconstructive plastic surgery. He’d be lucky to find someone who would willingly stich Mycroft up.

Except, perhaps...

“John,” he said. “I’ve got to call John.”

“No,” Mycroft protested, tears pouring down his face into the seeping blood. “Leave him out of it. He blames me for Sherlock anyway…”

“Damned well should. He’s not talking to me these days, either. But he’s the one person who might do a decent job of it….”

“You can’t—“ Mycroft’s voice was shaking, but it had somehow regained the note of command Lestrade remembered from other days—better days.

“Shut up,” he growled, and reached for his mobile. He dialed and waited. “John? Greg. I’ve got a problem. I’ve half-ripped Mycroft’s face off and I need medical help.”

John’s squall was impressive. “What the hell are you doing with that tosser?' he snarled. “And good for you. Me, I want to punch him. Don’t look at me for help. Take him to the A&E.”

“John, I bought him. He’s my—he’s my slave, all right? And he needs help. No NHS shop will help him.”

John swore bitterly, then called back, voice fading for a moment as he said, “Mary? Got an emergency call. I may be awhile. Can dinner wait?” A woman’s voice answered, sounding cheerful and amused more than annoyed, and John returned to the phone. “All right. Mary can drive me over. You’ll have to pay the cab or Tube for me to get back, though: Mary’s on morning shift today and won’t be able to come for me.”

“I can lend you my Oyster card,” Lestrade said, unsure he could find the cash for a cab. “How long?”

“Still in the flat you were in….before?”

“Yeah.”

“Give us a quarter-hour or so.”

“Anything I can do while we wait?”

“Pressure. Keep it covered—it won’t heal as well if the edges dry. Don’t fuss with it. How bad is it?”

“I…I…” He couldn’t bring himself to describe what had happened. He swallowed. “Skin’s ripped off most his cheek, but still attached.”

“Muscle damage?”

“I don’t think so. I think the…cable…I think it coasted over the top of the muscle layer. May be some bruising.”

“Ok. Not likely to be much nerve damage either, then. Good. We’ll hope for the best.

Lestrade nodded, and hung up after John. He looked at Mycroft. “He’s coming.”

Mycroft’s eyes burned over the mass of mottled white-and-bloody towels.

“I had to do something,” Lestrade said.

Mycroft didn’t answer.

Lestrade sat down and stared at the cable lead, which he’d dropped onto the table top. “I didn’t mean to do that,” he said. “I thought it was the leather leash. I grabbed the wrong leash.”

Saying it, he realized it didn’t sound all that much better. But the leather leash would not have done the damage the cable had. His blow would not have been as concentrated, and the leather didn’t have the twisted wires to form a serrated edge.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not sure he wasn’t making a terrible mistake, but unable to stop himself. A master should never apologize. A gentleman always should…

Mycroft grunted, a blend of acknowledgement, irritation, and pain. He paused, closing his eyes. The one on the uninjured side was gummy with tears. The one on the other side mixed tears and blood, clotting in his lashes. He said, then, tightly, “Accepted.”

Lestrade could hear what it cost him. He didn’t know whether to be angry his slave’s pride struggled over the acceptance—or to be admiring, that the gentleman he’d once worked with chose the magnanimous and wiser route.

“John should do a good job of it. Battle surgeon.”

“Ummm.” There was a note of doubt in Mycroft’s response.

They sat, silent, waiting.

“How bad are your finances?” Mycroft said, suddenly. “Seriously. I need to know. I wouldn’t have bought so much if I’d understood.”

Lestrade looked blankly at the bloody cable lead. “Bad,” he made himself say. “Bad enough I’m not sure we won’t end up in collars together if I can’t scrape up some cash quickly. The private citizens can be paid on time. The cost of the traffic light and the constables is a bigger problem. They could decide to take me for debt, and then we’re both up for auction.”

Mycroft grunted, as though he’d been struck in the stomach—a pained sound, and far more convincing proof of regret than his earlier apologies. “I’m sorry,” he husked. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

Lestrade sighed and pressed his face into his palms. “I know, mate. I know. It’s just—truth is I probably couldn’t afford you in the first place. If I’d a working brain I’d have held onto my savings and let it all go. Stupid pride in the first place. Now we’re both buggered.”

There was a knock on the door.

“That’ll be John,” Lestrade said. He hurried out and let the doctor in. “Back this way—kitchen,” he said.

John loped through the flat and went to kneel by Mycroft’s chair. “Ok—let me look.” His voice was gruff, but professional. He gently forced Mycroft’s fingers from the pad of paper towels, then eased them back to look. He winced. “Bugger. You weren’t kidding. Cable? What the hell were you doing hitting him with cable?”

“Grabbed the wrong thing,” Lestrade managed to say. He’d never felt so humiliated in his life. He was a copper. He tried to be a good man. He was trying to be a good slave owner. He’d ripped his slave’s face open, and there was John to see it all, each little scalloped edge where the cable had sliced through skin, the blood everywhere… “It was a mistake,” he said.

“Uh,” John grunted, then got to work, turning Mycroft’s face up into the light and moving to stand beside him where he wouldn’t cast shade on his own work space.

It was slow, and cautious, John easing the skin back a bit at a time, making sure the site was clean and treated with antiseptic. He was careful, using surgical adhesive to provide anchor points to position the skin, along with stitches. Then he stitched the edges.

“You’re actually lucky it was cable, not a sharp edge,” John muttered, hands busy as he proceeded. “Heals more cleanly.”

Mycroft grunted, but didn’t risk shaking John’s hand by replying.

“How bad will the scarring be?” Lestrade asked, imagining for the first time Mycroft’s face when the wound had healed.

“Not sure,” John said. “I’m trying to do good work, and I’m trained to make things as easy as possible for reconstructive surgery after. But I think your big advantage is that it followed the natural shape of the cheek. Any scar will follow the line of the cheekbone and jaw, or the line of the cheek as it reaches the mouth. He may be marked, but it won’t be disfiguring.”

Then Mycroft did risk speech, muttering an indistinct, “Never pretty anyway…”

“And now you’ll have an interesting war wound to impress the young men,” John said, jovially. “Really. It could be a lot worse.”

When he was done he injected Mycroft with antibiotic and wrote out a prescription for Lestrade for more antibiotic pills. “It’s against the law, but buying them on your NHS will cost so much less than having to pay for them from the slave doctors—and you’ll be more likely to actually get what you’re paying for, not talcum powder and glue.”

Lestrade nodded. As a copper he should have objected. As a destitute man with an injured slave, he could only be grateful that John had always enjoyed playing at the edge of what was legal.

“What do I owe you?”

John scowled, and shot a less than happy glance at Mycroft. “Part of me says you owe me ten minutes alone with the bastard in a back room, and I’ll promise to glue together whatever is left of him when I’m done. But…” He shook his head. “Whatever happened, nothing’s bringing Sherlock back.” He frowned, then, and cocked his head toward the door. “Talk?”

Lestrade nodded, and followed the smaller man out into the sitting room. “What?”

John frowned down at his toes, his emergency kit slung over one shoulder like a messenger bag. “I thought I saw…” He stopped and shook his head. “I know I’m having a hard time. I’m not going to lie and say different. But I really thought I saw Sherlock the other day, with some street people. And…this is so fucked, but yesterday I could have sworn I saw Moriarty.”

Lestrade stared, stunned. “John…”

“I know, I know. They’re both dead. I saw both bodies. It’s got to be the PTSD. I mean, sometimes I see Sherlock everywhere. But not like that. Not that real. And I never see that little toe-rag Moriarty.”

“John—I saw the bodies, too. I don’t mean to doubt you, but…”

“I know. I just—I had to tell someone, you know?”

Lestrade nodded, then asked again, “What do I owe you? That was a lot of work, and you’re bending the rules till they’re ready to snap for me.”

“Nothing,” John said, then added, scowling, “Just—if you see anything that makes you wonder, too? Let me know?’

Lestrade nodded, and saw John to the door.

Alone in the flat again with Mycroft, he felt less at ease. He was reluctant to go back into the kitchen, though he could hear the other man moving around, cleaning things and clearing up. Instead he pulled up one of his favorite play-lists and sat in his big recliner, in the dim room, listening to sad music.

Eventually the room went still more dark as Mycroft turned out the kitchen lights. He heard his slave come to lean in the doorway of the kitchen.

“May I ask a favor?”

Lestrade grunted, annoyed but guilty. “What?”

“I’d like permission to manage your accounts. I’ll have a better understanding of your situation—and I’m quite good at accounts. I started in forensic accounting for the Foreign Office. If anyone can help your finances, I suspect I can.”

Lestrade was silent, thinking about it. On the one hand it felt wrong—a loss of face. His slave could manage his money better than he could? But the odds were Mycroft could, and it seemed stupid to waste the man’s genius on cleaning out the loo and cooking bad meals. After too long he said, reluctantly, “Yeah. All right.”

A similar pause hung between them, then Mycroft said, dryly, “Thank you.”

“Mmmm.”

“And—one other possibility?”

“Yeah?”

“I…I managed to secrete a small amount of money prior to being declared government property. Not, mind you, a lot.” Mycroft’s voice was prim and determined in his denial. “Enough to cover the damages, though.”

Lestrade took it in. “Your definition of ‘not a lot’ is kind of fucked,” he said, eventually. “It took me years to save up less than that. I could buy a new car with that—and a nice one. That’s…”

“Enough to purchase my freedom, but not enough to rebuild my life,” Mycroft snapped. “It’s a windfall, not a fortune, Lestrade. No more. I can arrange for the damages to be covered without getting you in trouble. May I?”

It was a temptation—such a temptation. But he’d be in Mycroft’s debt.

No. He wouldn’t. No matter what the law said, it was Mycroft who owed him. He wasn’t the one who’d gone waltzing across a roadway wearing a locator collar set to exclude detours. He wasn’t the one who’d caused two cars to be totaled, one driver sent to the A&E, and ended the useful life of a corner traffic light. He was just the chump who’d have to pay for it. Looked at that way….

He sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “I suppose that’s all right.”

“Very good. If you’d clear access for me to oversee your accounts in the morning, I’ll get to work. Things should be in hand by the end of the week.”

Lestrade grunted, then asked, forlornly, “Is there a chance you’ve got enough ready to get us a pizza?” he asked.

He could almost hear Mycroft thinking. After a moment the man said, in a wry voice, “Yes. Provided you don’t like pepperoni.”

“I love pepperoni, but I’ll settle for sausage. Mushrooms?”

“The more the better.”

“You’ll make the order?”

“Immediately.”

 

That night, lying in his sleeping bag, his stomach roiling with paracetamol and pizza, Mycroft reviewed the day.

A blend of disasters and fascination, he concluded. Perhaps even, ultimately, good luck.

He thought of Lestrade’s too obvious horror at hurting his slave. The man had not just been guilty, but kind in the aftermath, and determined to make amends. And he’d given Mycroft access to his accounts.

Mycroft started to smile, and cringed as his injured cheek protested. He touched the swollen, sore skin gently. He’d be scarred, he thought. He’d always been the plain one—the gawky ginger with the big nose and freckles and the cowlick fringe. Age hadn’t helped, in his opinion. Now he’d be scarred like a thug, or the kind of pirate Sherlock had always longed to be.

There was, somewhere, a vain and lonely boy who wanted to weep at the thought. A bolder, more mischievous part of his persona, though, was amused. Perhaps if and when he returned to his proper life he’d leave the scar and use it to terrify minions and prisoners under interrogation.

He had control of Lestrade’s accounts. He could repair the damage he’d done the man—possibly even make him a legal fortune, given time. He knew he handled money well. He could handle it well for Greg. And if he also was able to use his access to weasel around the internet boundaries Lestrade had imposed? Then good: he’d finish this wretched mission that much sooner.

As he drifted to uncomfortable sleep, he frowned. John had seen Moriarty—and Sherlock.

Either people were being careless….

Or at least one of those two men had plans for John Watson. Plans Mycroft would much prefer never be put into effect. Watson was a good man, but a terrible spy, and Mycroft liked him right where he was: benched on the sidelines, where he could be kept safe—and out of trouble.

But then he was asleep, and in the morning he was too busy mastering Lestrade’s software to think the issue through any further.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a quiet, rather sweet, low-plot chapter, but it's a necessary turning point. It's NOT a resolution--indeed, in some ways it's going to make everything worse and harder for Our Boys as they start having to recognize, identify, and deal with the realities of their situation. But it's also a lot redemptive and very, very gentle.
> 
> Which, after last chapter's blood, I myself found quite welcome.
> 
> Hope you like it.

Mycroft woke the next morning to pain—dull, throbbing pain and a cheek that felt far too fat and fleshy to be his own. He reached up and touched the side of his face—hot under his fingers, and too dense. He worried an infection had set in, and wondered what he’d do if it had. He couldn’t open his eyes—they were glued shut with old tears and the remains of blood from the night before. He struggled to sit up in his sleeping bag, floundering and grunting softly as his pulse picked up and his face throbbed even more insistently.

The door of the bathroom opened. “Here.” Hands steadied him, bracing behind his shoulders. “What do you want? Bog? Face flannel?”

He wanted the hurt to stop. He wanted to see what he was doing. He wanted to hit Lestrade, all the anger he’d swallowed down the night before suddenly rising up like an enraged cobra now that the immediate emergency had passed. He forced himself to pause, shaking with the rage that raced through him. He took a breath. He evaluated his situation as rationally as he was able. His bladder and bowels announced they had no intention of allowing him to clear his eyes first.

“Loo,” he said. His voice was hoarse, his throat sore and raw.

“Ok. Here, grab tight—I’ll help you up and get you there.” Lestrade wrapped Mycroft’s fingers around one wrist, gripping Mycroft’s wrist in return. His other arm curled around Mycroft’s back and under one arm, fingers clinging a bit too tight against his ribs. “Ready? On three?”

“Just wait,” Mycroft gritted out. “You’re not going to miss it when I start to move.” He gathered himself, searched for his center, searched for some surge of energy in the soggy, aching, weary morning corpse he wore. After a second he gripped tight on Lestrade’s wrist, and pulled forward. Lestrade matched him, adding a blessed extra bit of power for the rise up from the limp sleeping bag.

“Step careful. You don’t want to trip on the bedding.” He waited while Mycroft lifted one bare foot, then the other, waited while he found secure footing on the cheap lino, then carefully guided him to the loo and steadied him while he turned, then braced him as he dropped to the open toilet seat. “You good?”

“I’m good.” He waited for Lestrade to leave the room.

Lestrade didn’t, instead turning on the water in the sink and splashing about. A second later he was squatting in front of Mycroft, tucking a hot, wet flannel into his hands. “Here. Have a nice wash-up while you go.”

Mycroft could not go. He’d always been shy of public urination and defecation, and this morning, helpless as he was, he could not open the necessary sphincters. There was too much going on—too much stress, too much physical damage. “I need you to go,” he said, voice too tetchy for a slave—annoyed, but also pitifully frantic. His bladder hurt, his bowels churned and cramped without releasing. “Please…just go?” It was a near whine, now.

Lestrade grunted, embarrassed himself. “Yeah, sorry. Sure. Tell you what, I’ll make some tea, then come on back and help you up again, right?”

“I’ll call when I’m…finished.” It was a request, though. An outright plea. God, he thought, give me back some control. Give me something. Privacy. Just go…

Lestrade mumbled and rose, and the door clicked shut behind him.

Still frozen and unable to release, Mycroft buried his face in the hot flannel, bunching most of the fabric over his eyes. He let the wet mass sit, softening the crusts that glued his lashes and lids together, heating and soothing the sympathetic muscle ache in his forehead and temples—reflexive tension from the pain of the actual injury. After minutes, he was able to dab gingerly at his eyes, working the lashes free and massaging his skull. Eventually he risked taking the flannel away, and opening his eyes.

A few gummy floaters drifted across his vision, then cleared. He could see again. That alone made him feel less helpless. His internal plumbing relaxed in gratitude. The relief was astounding. He still hurt. He was still angry, and frightened. He was no longer blind, helpless, and on the verge of his bladder bursting.

When he was done he thought he might be able to rise on his own.

He wasn’t. He felt wobbly-legged and insecure, as though his body had been over-extended. His joints all hurt—knees, elbows, wrists. His energy was low. He had trouble believing that was all down to the cut on his face.

Then he remembered the previous afternoon—the shock of the collar, the fall to the street cobbles, the frantic creep back to the pavement, screaming the whole time. He paused and took time to study his body beyond the stitches and swollen flesh of his cheek.

His knees were scabbed and bruised. So were his elbows, if his fingers told him true. His palms were scraped a bit, and definitely stippled with tiny broken blood vessels from catching himself as he fell. His shoulders ached.

He hurt all over…and he was feeble as a sick kitten.

He considered his options. In the end he concluded he had only one realistic one. Reluctantly he raised his voice, calling “Done” in a croaky baritone that seemed more like Sherlock than like himself.

There were careful footsteps, and the bathroom door opened. Lestrade slipped in with a tray in one hand and a folding table in the other. He held out the table. “Set that up, yeah?”

“What?”

“Figured you’d be awhile getting moving. Might as well drink your tea and eat some brekkers where you are, yeah? Take the stuff John prescribed.”

Mycroft, feeling more idiotic than he could describe, opened out the little table, and Lestrade put the tray down on it, before sitting on the edge of the tub. “Strong black tea. Milk. Sugar. Leftover pizza. And that’s the antibiotic John prescribed, and he added in some decent painkiller—more than just paracetamol.”

Embarrassed at his enthusiasm, Mycroft fumbled the tops of the medications, squinting at the labels and trying to make out the instructions.

“Here—got my reading glasses with me.” Lestrade put them on and read off the directions, telling him two of this and one of that, three times daily with food. He grinned, ruefully. “Always the same, ennit?”

“Except when it isn’t,” Mycroft said. “And when it ‘ent,’ it always matters.” He shook out the pills and drank them down, ignoring the too-hot tea in his longing for relief, and his fear of infection. He looked at Lestrade, then, and asked, fearfully, “My face—how bad is the swelling?”

Lestrade seemed to have to steel himself, but he looked, carefully and thoughtfully. “Pretty puffy,” he said. “Not red or streaky, though. Oozing a bit, but it’s oozing clear.”

“No infection?”

The other man shrugged. “Can’t swear I’m right—that’s more John’s line than mine. But I don’t think so.”

Mycroft wilted in relief. Only with the threat abated a bit could he admit he’d been imagining green puss and systemic infection and the corruption creeping into his eyes, and from there to his brain following the optic nerve, and…

He shuddered, naked on the toilet seat.

“God,” Lestrade said. “You’re going to freeze.” He grabbed a heavy terry towel and flipped it over Mycroft’s shoulders. “Now drink your tea and eat your pizza. You’re never going to get well if you don’t take care of yourself.”

Mycroft hunched into the warmth, feeling the odd paradoxical nature of the scene—the conflict of philosophies.

A slave was supposed to take care of his master.

A master was supposed to take care of his slaves.

Between them they’d bollixed up both premises the day before. Now they were trapped in uneasy uncertainty, neither quite sure where it went from here.

He poured more tea, glad Lestrade had brought a big pot. He nibbled the cold pizza, finding it unexpectedly satisfying as breakfast foods went.

“You’ll want a shower,” Lestrade said. “Or a bath? I can help you in and out and leave you to yourself in between, if you like.”

“You’ve got work,” Mycroft said, already worrying his owner would be late.

“Called in and said I’d be missing morning duty,” Lestrade said. “Helps that I’ve got that prescription from John on record. They think I’m sick today—figure me for a bit of a hero going in at all.”

Mycroft felt a sudden desperate gratitude that Lestrade was going in. A whole day together would destroy them both. But it did mean he could count on help bathing and dressing, and get Lestrade to clear him for online accounts and bookkeeping. He tried to force a smile and winced as his cheek protested. “Well thought-out. A bath would be nice, then. And…more tea when I’m dressed?” He considered, and added, “Am I allowed another pain killer? I feel like…” He paused, unable to risk mentioning Sherlock—the supposedly dead Sherlock he and John and Lestrade all presumably mourned.

Lestrade heard the unstated name, and accepted the silence that replaced it with a crooked grin. “Yeah. Not a junkie just because you need a bit more right now. First day or so will be bad.”

“When did you get the prescriptions? Did John have it sent over?”

“No. I went out this morning. Couldn’t sleep. Once the sun was up and the bloody starlings were screaming I figured I might as well go fetch your meds as lie there.” He waited while Mycroft took one more pill, then cleared away the tray and folded the table. He put out his hand, and when Mycroft reached to take it he grabbed the other man’s wrist, wrapping long fingers around his own strong wrist. “Up you come.” He hoisted, then helped Mycroft over to the bath. “Let me start the water first.”

Mycroft clung to the nearby towel bar and watched as his owner opened the taps, tested the heat, fitted the stout rubber plug in the drain, and dug in the bathroom cupboard for body gel and shampoo and conditioner.

“Here you go, then.” He helped Mycroft into the warm water, not letting go until his slave sat securely on the bottom of the tub. “Call when you’re ready.”

“I will.”

When he was gone Mycroft sat, frowning and bolt upright, the water slowly rising up his buttocks, over his hip, up the soft flanks below his ribs, until it reached almost to his sternum.

He didn’t know what he felt. He felt—uneasy. Odd. Even perhaps frightened, though of what he was hard-put to say. The cobra of his wrath had coiled and lain down, and left behind something far more unsettling.

As his pain faded, his body spoke of gentle touches, reliable strength, help when help was needed. His mind considered kind actions and…someone who in spite of their respective roles, treated him almost as a peer. Or something. As something to be cared for.

Mycroft was unused to being cared for. That was his role. Indeed, that was so much his role he’d had no doubt of his ability to step into the cover role of slave. Between the powerful drive the mission itself provided and the familiar role of caretaker to the universe, he’d assumed he could meet any demands made on him, even the lowly, degrading ones. He’d have his loyal servants with him: anger and need and compassion and duty. They’d seen him through hell before. He’d assumed they would see him through hell again. Rape? Beatings? Degredation? He’d summon his internal servants and prevail in the end.

It was all much more complicated than he’d expected.

Perhaps he should not have nodded to Anthea at the auction, when Lady Smallwood had signaled her idea of switching the chosen buyer from the small-time slave house to Lestrade. But it had seemed too perfect to pass up. A familiar player, someone Mycroft already thought he knew inside and out, someone who might, in dire necessity, even be trusted into the mission if he needed an ally. Someone with enough connections to Sherlock and John and Mycroft to more than explain any apparent coincidental overlap between Mycroft’s actions and Moriarty’s old network. It had made sense. And Lestrade was no monster.

Even when he’d dragged Mycroft down Pall Mall, Mycroft had understood the difference between a small, ordinary man granted a chance at a petty revenge—and a monster. People gave in to temptation. Anger festered. Opportunities for spite arose, and people failed to turn away. But it was quite different from the man who planned orgies of vengeance, orchestrated symphonies of pain and retribution.

He shook his head, trying to clear the mist from his own thoughts. He knew Lestrade felt horrible guilt at having cherished his anger and given in to his longing for vengeance. Mycroft, familiar with real vendettas, evaluated him differently. The man hadn’t even planned for owning a slave! He’d spent years satisfying his hurt feelings with the fleeting, trivial fantasy of seeing his nemesis shamed and in his power—but had never spent time detailing the horrors he would visit upon Mycroft once he had that power.

If vengeance was a dish best served cold, Lestrade’s vengeance was barely sufficient to qualify as a chilled strawberry on a spoonful of sorbet. His malice lacked the scope and ambition of a monster…indeed, it was rather shabby even for the average human being.

Perhaps, Mycroft thought, that was why he’d felt the oddest feelings that morning—helped and tended, sheltered and looked after, fed and warmed and safe in his master’s keeping. Or perhaps it was just his current depletion, reducing him to the emotions of the nursery—feelings he barely remembered from the years before Sherlock arrived and usurped the role of “child” entirely, leaving Mycroft as a newly dubbed squire—an apprentice adult in a world tailored to orbit around the baby’s needs.

He sighed, found a flannel, and washed, knowing he couldn’t stay in the tub all morning—though it was tempting. The thought of warm water, refreshed over hours, seemed not at all unwelcome.

Letrade’s body wash was cheap, and scented with a cloying artificial fragrance that reminded Mycroft of laundry detergent. The shampoo and conditioner were worse. Cleanliness, though, was blessed and wonderful. He sudsed his knees and elbows, gently washing away gummy traces of serum and blood. He washed groin and bum and belly and flanks; underarms and neck and chest. He ran fresh water into his hands and tenderly dabbed at his face, avoiding the stitches but trying to leave the sound bits feeling clean and refreshed. He washed out his flannel, and used it to gingerly suds and rinse his hair, then lightly condition and rinse.

At last he felt as clean as human effort could make him—and he’d stalled as long as he plausibly could. He called out, still hoarse and rough, “I’m done, sir!” He realized in dismay he no longer felt sure what to call Lestrade. “Master” felt suddenly too formal, as did “sir.” But “Lestrade” suggested too much of the old days, when he’d mastered the detective and MI5 agent. And “Greg” was impossibly too intimate.

The door opened, and Lestrade peeked in. “Hang on. Let me get a bath mat down and kick your sleeping bag out of the way.” He moved around, preparing, then leaned over, bracing one hand on the bathroom wall for added security, and twining the other with Mycroft’s. Between them they drew Mycroft to a standing position, and steadied him as he climbed from the bath. Lestrade whipped the towel back over Mycroft’s shoulders, then, and led him out of the bathroom to his own bedroom, where he insisted Mycroft sit on the bed.

The clothes from the day before were as good as ruined…but Lestrade had dug through his own clothing once more, finding jogging trousers and a soft fleece pullover. He gently helped Mycroft into the clothing, then led him back out to the sitting room before scurrying back and draining the bath and cleaning up the loo. When he came back out, though, he’d reached the end of his certainty. He looked at his slave and said, helplessly, “What next?”

Mycroft, huddled in a corner of the sofa, blinked owlishly, feeling as unsure. They were in uncharted water.

“This can’t last,” he said, uncertainly. “Guilt is only going to carry either of us so far….sir. Neither of us meant what happened yesterday. Both of us are feeling some degree of shame. But it can’t last.”

Lestrade gave him an exasperated look, and rolled his eyes. “Bit existential, sonny Jim. Kind of a bit too ‘meaning of life’ for me. I was more wondering what we were going to do in the next hour or so.”

Mycroft, helpless, laughed.

It started as a sort of cough, bursting breathily out of him. It wobbled, the damage from screaming roughening a chortle that tried to roll easily up from his belly. His face hurt—his cheek ached. It made his eyes water, but the laughter kept coming, lunatic and lost and as necessary as water after drought. He wrapped his arms around himself, trying to hold it in, keep it from shaking his sore joints and aching ribs and setting off all the hurts the painkillers and warm water had soothed away. It didn’t help—the laughter jerked the reins from his grip and ran wild, until pain and hysteria battled for control.

 

 

Lestrade was a copper. He understood what he was watching. He’d dealt with it before, when people broke after too long a strain—too deep an injury. He moved quickly, then paused, knowing he could not do for his slave what he’d do for a common drunk or a child or a prostitute or even a murderer. He couldn’t risk wrapping Mycroft in his arms. He’d been forced to realize the day before he had too much power over this man.

He squatted in front of him, elbows on his own knees, and gripped Mycroft’s forearms, where they crossed over his chest. “There-there. Hush, lad. Hush.  It’s all right. No fear—it’s all right, now.” He felt stupid. The words were stupid. His hands gripping Mycroft’s long, slim arms, could bring no comfort. This was his possession—this was the man he’d ripped open the day before. This was his obligation and his honor…

He felt lost and frightened. He’d felt lost and frightened all night, lying awake. When he’d got up at last to go fetch the prescriptions from the chemist’s, he’d half wanted to end things then and there—though he wasn’t even sure what he meant by ending things. Manumit Mycroft? Neither of them could afford that. Not with the debt still outstanding, and Mycroft’s career ended, and Lestrade’s own career at risk until the debt was washed away. Mycroft would only end up back on the block in weeks, if not days, and Lestrade to follow him soon after. Suicide? He supposed he could manumit Mycroft and leave him everything Lestrade owned. The estate was limited, but a man like Mycroft might have the savvy to leverage a little money into a new start, if he didn’t have to lift Lestrade’s fortunes at the same time. Letrade knew that he himself couldn’t manage it—but he wasn’t Mycroft Holmes.

He’d been such a damned idiot to buy the man. He’d given in to years of anger and selfish resentment, and never bothered planning ahead, and see where it had brought them both?

He started to let go, figuring the least he could do was make more tea—the eternal solution to all bad things. Instead Mycroft’s hand snaked and gripped his, refusing to let go. The other man had stopped giggling and gasping, but now sat, curled over his own thighs, eyes shut, clinging to Lestrade.

Lestrade edged over, easing around Mycroft’s knees until he could sit against the sofa, back braced against the lower frame. He eased one hand free just long enough to move his grip, until he held one of Mycroft’s hand in both of his.

Mycroft groped blindly and clutched his free hand over Lestrade’s, fingers pressing firmly against Lestrade’s knuckles.

They sat, silent. Outside the flat the sound of neighbors heading for work and children off to school rose up, and the traffic of the great city purred and rumbled in the distant background. Starlings bickered and bragged on the rooftops and window sills. The grumble and beep of heavy equipment sounded from a block or two away.

The sun rose up higher, cresting the neighboring terrace. It bathed the room in amber light.

Neither spoke.

Neither moved.

And so the day began.

 

 

“Lestrade?”

A snore sounded again from beside Mycroft’s thigh. He twisted in place, hands still clutching the other man’s. He craned his neck to peer over his own body.

Lestrade sat, back braced against the lower sofa, head fallen back until he faced almost straight up at Mycroft. He looked tired—bone deep tired. His skin seemed greyer than usual, his wrinkles showing, his eyes baggy and puffy, his brow still slightly frowning.

He’d been awake all night, Mycroft thought. No doubt miserable and guilty.

Mycroft knew about those nights. He’d spent far too many nights of his own with nothing to see him through till morning but a bottle of brandy and a bad case of guilt. He could no longer say with precision how many lives had ended due to his errors—or even due to his inability to emulate God and accomplish all things at once, no matter how contradictory. He wished he could wake Lestrade and say, “It’s all right. You don’t understand—no matter how bad yesterday was, no matter what damage you did…you won the jackpot. Don’t you understand? Everybody lived. Yesterday everybody lived. Neither us killed anyone. None of the damage done is beyond repair.”

He knew it wouldn’t help. He knew it had never helped him. When the guilt ate at you like a worm in an apple, or a cancer in your lungs, all there was left was pain and waiting.

He let go of the other man’s hand and stroked his hair, like a mother stroking a feverish child. Then he grinned a twisted, uncertain grin, and pilfered Lestrade’s pockets until he found his mobile.

“Hello? Is this DI Lestrade’s division? Yes? Oh, good. I’m calling in to let you know he’s a bit worse off than he thought this morning. He may still make it in, if he feels better after lunch, but I’m not sure we can count on it. Me? Just…just someone who helps around his flat. I’ll have him call to confirm later, when he’s feeling better.”

He hung up and returned the phone to Lestrade’s pocket. He knit his fingers into Letrade’s again, and leaned back into the firm cushions of the sofa, closing his eyes. The golden sun seeped through his lids, turned orange by his own blood. The flat was still. The neighborhood silent for the workday.

Soon both men slept.


End file.
